4.00pm: Reduction in US troops for South Korea war games nothing to do with the North
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has confirmed that a reduction in the number of US troops taking part in this week’s joint exercise with South Korea has nothing to do with the ongoing tensions with Pyongyang.
"The numbers are by design to achieve the exercise objectives and you always pick what you want to emphasise," he said.
"Right now there is a heavy emphasis on command post operations, so the integration of all the different efforts.”
Mr Mattis spoke while travelling to Jordan, where he will meet with Middle East leaders to discuss the fight against ISIS.As the US President faces growing criticism for failing to single out neo-Nazis for their part in the Charlottesville violence, Daniel Shaw said: “Who is Trump to be lecturing anybody abroad when all of the problems we are embroiled with right here in Virginia?”
Speaking to RT, he added: “They [North Korea] want another war, it’s the perfect distraction for Trump after Charlottesville demonstrates just how divided, racist and full of white supremacy this country is."
Mr Shaw also suggested that North Korea could influence other nations to launch their own nuclear programmes.
“I think what North Korea has demonstrated now, for all of the US presidency before Trump, that yes they are going to continue to try out their weapons, they are not going to stand down, that oppressed countries can join the nuclear club as well and won’t go the way of Iraq or Libya.”
North Korea has warned that the US will be “pouring gasoline on fire” if it goes ahead with its planned joint military drill with South Korea this week.
Some 17,5000 US troops are set to begin the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) tomorrow, an annual exercise which North Korea has described as “the most explicit expression of hostility against us”.
“No one can guarantee that the exercise won't evolve into actual fighting," said an editorial in Pyongyang’s Rodong Sinum state newspaper.
"The Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercises will be like pouring gasoline on fire and worsen the state of the peninsula.”
Warning of an "uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war" on the peninsula, it added: "If the United States is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else's doorstep far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever."
The war games date back to 1976 and are largely compromised of computer simulations designed to strengthen joint decision making.
There have been widespread calls for the drills to be delayed or cancelled in light of the current US-North Korea impasse.
Relations between the two nuclear powers are at an all-time low after Pyongyang tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) last month, putting the continental US firmly in its crosshairs.
Donald Trump vowed to respond to any further threats with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”.
In response, North Korea threatened to strike waters around the US Pacific territory of Guam.
State media reports that Kim would "watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees” before launching any missiles.
Despite the ongoing tensions, Seoul and Washington have said that the UFG will go ahead as planned.
As a small concession, plans to bring two aircraft carriers to the peninsula may be scrapped, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
Yesterday it was reported that the US Air Force had flown a journalist in a F-16 fighter jet “as close as we absolutely can go” to the North Korean border.
ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz was told by a pilot that they were just 10 miles away from Kim’s hermit kingdom, as officials opened up the Andersen Air Force Base to the media to show off its capabilities.
The pilot told Ms Raddatz: “I tell you, it definitely gives you a real purpose for waking up in the morning.
“That’s our mission here, is to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice and that’s why we like to say in the 51st Fighter Wing is that ‘we’re ready to fight tonight’.”
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