North Korea put its army on standby on Monday. Any attempt to intercept what North Korea claims is a satellite launch will be treated as an act of war, according to a military statement.

America and Japan claim that North Korea is really planning to test its most advanced long-range missile—the Taepodong-2. Officials believe that Pyongyang’s claim that it plans to launch a communications satellite is just a cover, and have suggested they may shoot down any rocket North Korea launches, as it would violate UN Security Council resolutions. In theory, the Taepodong-2 missile can reach as far as Alaska and Hawaii.

“Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war,” said a North Koreanmilitary statement. “If the enemies recklessly opt for intercepting our satellite, our revolutionary armed forces will launch without hesitation a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against the strongholds of the U.S. and Japanese aggressors and the South Korean puppets who hatched plots to intercept it.”

The United States and South Korea began their annual war games Monday, prompting North Korea to call its military into “full combat readiness.” America claims the war games are routine, but North Korea has accused the U.S. of planning an invasion, and has readied its 1.1 million-man army for battle. The North has cut off its military hotline with South Korea, meaning that there is no longer any communication between the two. Seoul officials said 726 South Koreans also were barred from crossing into North Korea, where they work at the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex.

Last week, North Korean officials warned they could not guarantee the safety of South Korean passenger planes flying near its airspace while the war games were taking place.

The New York Times reports that North Korea’s belligerent rhetoric “reinforced fears that it might resort to military provocations to vent anger at South Korea, which has stopped sending the North free food, as well as to drag the U.S. into negotiating. North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats are the impoverished country’s main tool of extracting foreign aid.”

North Korea has the bomb, and it is developing long-range missiles to deliver it. Instead of confronting the problem, the international community merely gives North Korea free food every time it makes too much noise.

The fact that North Korea is a nuclear power is a testament to America’s inability to confront the world’s biggest problem—that of human survival. If it could not stop North Korea from getting the bomb, how will it stop other unstable and rogue nations, like Iran, from getting it?

America has never had a long-term solution to North Korea; it just pays it to come back to the negotiation table whenever it makes a fuss. Is it any wonder it is making a fuss again now?

For more information, see our article “Exploding Fictions.”