US aircraft carrier arrives in South Korea for joint drills
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan has arrived in South Korea awaiting joint military exercises seen as a show of strength amid mounting North Korean threats. The Ronald Reagan and accompanying strike force ships docked at a naval base in the southern port city of Busan on Friday.
The arrival marks Washington‘s most significant commitment to date, with a renewed drive to manage more US nuclear “strategic assets” in the region to discourage North Korea.
Joint military exercises in the coming days will be the first to involve a US aircraft carrier in the region since 2017, when the US sent three aircraft carriers, including Reagan, for naval exercises with South Korea in response to Korea’s nuclear and nuclear weapons. of the North. missile tests of the time.
US aircraft carrier arrives in South Korea for joint drills
North Korea denounced the previous US military deployment and joint exercises as evidence of war and evidence of Washington and Seoul’s hostile policies. Reporting from the cockpit of Ronald Reagan, the stated mission was “to demonstrate the resolve of these allies in the face of renewed threats from North Korea.”
“This is a way to demonstrate the strength of the alliance in light of what the United States and South Korea are saying about these growing threats from North Korea. From North Korea’s point of view, they are always furious about these exercises,” McBride said.
Joint military exercises have declined in recent years to allow “top diplomacy to try and persuade North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons,” he said. “Obviously they didn’t,” he added. The North, McBride said, is likely to see the drills as a vindication of “their position that they must retain their precious nuclear weapons at all costs to ensure their survival in what they see as a hostile world.”
North Korea has ramped up weapons testing at a record pace in 2022, firing more than 30 ballistic weapons, including its ICBMs, while exploiting a split in the UN Security Council that escalated over Russia’s war against Ukraine.
