RT: What do you make of the fact that the US has slammed China for its trade relations with North Korea? Why is Washington telling Beijing how to do business?
Brian Becker: The US is employing arm-twisting against the People’s Republic of China. Arm-twisting that I should say in advance will not work, of course. China and DPRK trade, they are border countries. They share a border. The Trump administration has tried and failed to force China to do something that China cannot do. The DPRK is a sovereign country, no foreign troops occupy its land, unlike South Korea where tens of thousands of Americans troops occupy the southern part of Korea and have a big influence. No foreign power has a lot of influence in Pyongyang. So, the US and the Trump administration are lashing out against China…North Korea is saying to the world: "Look, if you have war exercises, so-called war games, which we do not consider to be games or funny, that simulate the destruction of our country, a country that had been destroyed by the US between 1950 and 1953, we are going to take action, including gaining new nuclear and missile technology to have a deterrent."
RT: North Korea has been provoking the international community with its weapons tests for years. What's Pyongyang trying to achieve? So far, they've only landed themselves in hot water with more sanctions and foreign pressure.
BB: They want a peace treaty and an end to economic sanctions. And they want to secure their country from any kind of imperial invasion, such as took place in Iraq and Libya. They are not provoking the international community; that is the spin based on Washington’s dominance in the international community at the UN. Just three weeks ago the US carried out a bomb, a nuclear bomb-dropping drill that simulated the nuclear destruction of North Korea. Nobody called that provocative. When North Korea sends off a missile test saying, ‘we are not going to be bullied – that is provocative. The narrative of North Korea’s ‘provocative activity’ in the face of US and South Korea carrying out the largest war exercises in the world, simulating the invasion and the destruction of North Korea that is never considered a provocation. That is a double standard, and we need to stop accepting the dominant narrative offered by Washington, the Pentagon and echoed by the mainstream media.