World Affairs Brief, December 29, 2017 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.
Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).
The North Korean, Russian and Chinese Strategic Threat
For decades, I have made the case in the WAB that Russia and China were building weapons of mass destruction with the intention of eventually striking the West in a pre-emptive strike— against US military targets, not cities—and that North Korea would provide the trigger for this massive war. My theory was that the Chinese did not want to destroy the West (which provides most of their export income) but blackmail it into submitting to their version of a New World Order.
My reason for picking NK as the trigger is that there had to be a reason to explain the big contradiction of why the globalists (prior to Trump) were being so permissive with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program and yet constantly threatening military destruction of Iran which didn’t yet have a weapon. To me, that could only mean the globalists knew that NK was being prepared to spared as a trigger event to a bigger nuclear war.
In turn, my unique theory also postulated that the Anglo-American globalists wanted this pre-emptive strike to take out the US military so they could justify convincing Americans and their allies into forming a militarized global government —now that the US military was mostly destroyed.
A key indicator of these treasonous intentions was Bill Clinton’s secret PDD-60, which changed our nuclear response doctrine in 1997 to one of absorbing a first strike and retaliating after, rather than “launch on warning.” PDD-60 also removed the alternate launch codes so that if the president’s coded launch signal from the White House is intercepted or blocked, our missiles, even from submarines, can’t launch—even to retaliate. You would think this was suicidal unless you understood the globalist intent to force the West into a militarized NWO with taxing power—something they could never achieve without absorbing a first strike from Russia.
But with the election of Donald Trump, the fight with NK might happen before Russia and China are ready to attack the West—eliminating the trigger event. Indeed, this complicates how things might turn out. As I have pointed out in recent briefs,

Ever since early summer Donald Trump has been threatening to take action against North Korea. This week, after yet another missile test from North Korea that had all the markings of a true intercontinental ballistic missile, it appears that Trump is finally getting ready to pull the trigger on a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. When even his globalist advisors, who have been trying to stall Trump’s resolve all summer and fall, think war is inevitable, something is going to happen soon.

My gut feeling is that the attack on the North will come after the Olympic games (Feb 9-24), and I still think that there is an 80% chance this war in North Korea will not escalate into a third world war at this time. But that means there is at least a 20% chance that it may do so, so continue your preparations. [go to www.joelskousen.com for recommendations]

Financial advisor Jim Rickards said this week that CIA Director Panetta told him that he expects the attack to go forward in March of 2018. As to that 20% chance Russia and China could use the new Korea war as a pretext to attack the US, let me review the state of their military readiness.
First it’s important to dispel the long held false notion that the Soviet Union collapsed and that Russia and Putin are no longer Communist. The “fall” of the Soviet Union was a carefully crafted deception where Moscow ordered satellite nations to allow dissidents to protest and eventually win. In the process Russia gained tremendous Western aid and technology transfers that helped boost their oil production and military industrial complex.
Make no mistake. Putin is still a Communist and has purged the original Communist Oligarchs (Berezovski and Guzinski et al) and replaced them with those loyal to him. J. R. Nyquist wrote a recent article confirming this. In the 19th World Festival of Communist Youth and Students, held in Russia (at Sochi) from the 13th to the 22nd of October this year, there was a massive rally that Putin addressed and gave telling and supportive remarks. Nyquist also quotes the only other journalist, Christopher Story, other than myself, who claimed the fall of the Soviet Union was contrived by Communists. Nyquist believes it too, but is otherwise a conspiracy denier about all aspects of US collusion in the phony fall and war on terror.
In late 2000 a British writer named Christopher Story asked the famous GRU defector, Viktor Suvorov, whether the fall of the Soviet Union was genuine. Suvorov said no, of course not. Story then asked about Suvorov’s contacts with the British military and intelligence establishment. Surely, said Story, they know what is going on. Suvorov assured him that British military and intelligence leaders were clueless. Story asked how this was possible. Suvorov replied: “Because they are stupid.”
Suvorov was wrong. The Anglo-American intelligence insiders were not stupid. They were globalists or under their influence, and purposely didn’t blow the whistle on the fake “Fall” so as to play along with and allow Russia to gain Western aid and trade as needed. Remember the globalists always use conflict and war to drive unsuspecting nations into a pre-prepared globalist “solution” to that conflict. They build enemies like Russia and China and promote weakness and disarmament to put the West at an initial disadvantage. But they do have secret weapons systems they intend to bring forth after the start of war to forestall any future nuclear attacks and help them win it eventually. This time, however, sovereignty will not be returned to each nation.
The North Korea threat: North Korea does have nuclear weapons though no missile test has successfully, so far, allowed the warhead to survive the high heat of reentry without burning up. NK has one Sinpo-class submarine capable of firing a ballistic missile, and is building 5 more. No one knows how many long range mobile ICBM’s NK has. It has successfully fired only one capable of long range, which broke up upon reentry.
The Chinese Nuclear threat: China has the massive numbers of armed personnel necessary to threaten the West in conventional combat but lacks the numbers in high tech military equipment (planes, missiles and ships) to win without an alliance with Russia. China has up to 90 inter-continental range ballistic missiles (66 land-based ICBMs and 24 submarine-based JL-2 SLBMs). All of their warheads are MIRVed multiple warheads (4-10 warheads per ICBM). China is in the final testing stages of a new ICBM (DF-17) that may be armed with a new Hypersonic Glide Vehicle—a maneuvering warhead that our current ABM system (which has no explosive warhead) cannot successfully intercept. It isn’t expected to be operational until 2020, and then only in small numbers.
China has 5 type 094 ballistic missile submarines with 3 more being built by 2020. They are armed with 12 JL-2 SLBMs, each with an estimated range of 4,600 mi. Each missile has 3-4 nuclear warheads.
China has around 600 modern aircraft largely of Russian origin. Most are fighters with some long range bombers, refueling and AWACS surveillance aircraft. It is also developing its own indigenous aircraft, including stealth aircraft, but few will be in full production until after 2020.
In summary, China is a rising military power but is still 3-4 years from having a sufficient quantity of modern weapons to fully challenge the West. For this reason, it won’t go to war alone but will have to wait upon Russian military strength. Whereas China has the manpower advantage, the Russians have the technical advantage. However, Russia is also short on quantity of its most modern weapons.
The Russian Military Threat:
Russia has 3 active Borei class ballistic missile submarines with between 16- 20 missile tubes each and 5 more under construction. Armed with the Bulava (missile) which has ten warheads each, a single Borei-class SSBN submarine can carry 200 warheads. According to the Federation of American Scientists, as of 2016, Russian Federation possesses 7,000 total nuclear warheads, of which 1,950 are strategically operational.
In 2017, Russia announced that it had destroyed its entire chemical weapons stockpile, but that has not been verified by international inspectors. Defectors have also revealed that Russia has developed a new series of nerve agents, some of which are one order of magnitude more lethal than tradition Sarin nerve gas. The agents are termed Novichok (newcomer) agents and have not been destroyed.
At its peak Russia had as many as 45,000 nuclear warheads (1988) but the government says their current stockpile (usable and not) is only 7,000. Under the Nunn-Lugar disarmament agreement after the “fall” of the Soviet Union, the US paid to dismantle many of the older Russian missiles, but they gave all the warheads back to Russia and even built the Russians a new state of the art nuclear warhead refurbishment factory to supposedly dismantle those warheads. The US has never been allowed inside to verify the nuclear material is being recycled for fuel rather than being made into new warheads.
Who knows what they really have? But from historical evidence of cheating, we must assume the Russians have much more than what their (or our) government reports. In terms of missiles the US has 406 MM-III missiles remaining out of 500 to start with. They are shooting them off as tests each year and not replacing them, and have replaced all of the 3 MIRVed warheads with a single warhead—a 300% reduction. In contrast the Russians have been building an entire fleet of modern missiles with 4-12 warheads each.
The RS-28 Sarmat (NATO reporting name: SATAN 2), is a Russian liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped, super-heavy thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile that is already being deployed by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau. It is intended to replace the previous R-36 missile, but none of the R-36s or Topol-Ms will be replaced. Its large payload would allow for up to 10 heavy warheads or 15 lighter ones or up to 24 hypersonic glide vehicles Yu-71—which have maneuvering capabilities.
The Topol-M missile can carry four to six warheads along with decoys, with a minimum range 2,000 km and a maximum range of 10,500 km. The Russian Strategic Missile Troops operate 70-100 Topol-M (SS-27) missile systems including 52 silo-based and an untold number of mobile systems, both truck and rail mounted—which make them extremely difficult to target by our missiles. Many of the older Russian ICBM are still in operation.
The Chinese and Russians operate a series of bioweapon labs and test facilities producing a host of diseases that can be unleashed on the West.