Korea

‘US designation of N. Korea as terror sponsor is backdoor for military action’

By designating Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism, President Donald Trump has opened a backdoor for a potential military option to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, under the pretext of “not talking to terrorists,” experts have told RT.

Announcing the news Monday, Trump stressed that this designation “will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime.”

The expert community, however, disagrees that further punitive measures against Pyongyang will help foster dialogue between the US and N. Korea, considering that North was removed from the terrorist sponsor list in 2008 as part of George W. Bush administration’s push for progress in denuclearization talks.

“This is going to make the diplomatic pathway that much further away...and I'm afraid it is not going to help the situation,”Sourabh Gupta, an Asia-Pacific strategic and economic policy specialist, told RT. “It is just a little further step more which is paving the way for military action. It just makes the path to diplomacy that much more harder to get to. Even talks about talks regarding talks to get to the negotiating table are stuck at this point in time. These sort of labels will provide no assistance whatsoever.”