From:
slider@anashram.org
The escalating crisis over North Korea is worrying experts who say that a previously unthinkable nuclear conflict is fast becoming a real
possibility.
“Right now, I would say we are heading to war,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, an organization that supports nuclear weapon reduction and eventual elimination.
Anxiety is especially acute among liberals who fear that President Trump’s confrontational rhetoric could upset the balance that has maintained a
tense peace on the Korean peninsula for decades.
They were unnerved by Trump’s speech to the United Nations this week, in which he derided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and said Kim was “on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”
Trump added that the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea in the event of an attack from Pyongyang on the U.S. or its allies.
Kim hit back with a rare personal statement, in which he called Trump a “mentally deranged dotard” and threatened “results beyond his expectation”
by way of retribution.
North Korea’s foreign minister suggested soon afterward that the regime
was contemplating detonating a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean.
Such a move would dramatically ratchet up the confrontation. No nation has detonated a nuclear device in the earth’s atmosphere since China did so in 1980.
Experts critical of Trump fear disaster could lie ahead.
“By any measure President Trump’s quote-unquote ‘strategy’ is not working,” said Michael Fuchs, who was a deputy assistant secretary of
State during the Obama administration.
“This is squarely in the hands of the president himself,” Fuchs, who is
now a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, added.
“The rest of his administration, so far at least, seems willing to carry
out a strategy focused on deterrence, reassurance, pressure and diplomacy.
But the president from time to time lobs a grenade on top of these
efforts, and spins the escalation up again.”
Supporters of the president, and those who take a more hawkish line on
North Korea generally, argue that tough words backed up by action are just
what is required.
On Thursday, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) suggested in an interview with
a San Diego television station that the North Koreans might soon be able
to strike the west coast of the United States with a nuclear weapon.
“The question is, do you wait for one of those? Or two? Do you
preemptively strike them? And that’s what the president has to wrestle with,” Hunter said. “I would preemptively strike them. You could call it declaring war, call it whatever you want.”
Similar notes have been sounded by John Bolton, who served as U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations during the presidency of George W. Bush.
“We’re getting very close to that point,” where a pre-emptive strike ought
to be considered, Bolton said during an interview with Leland Vittert of
Fox News Channel on Friday.
Experts sympathetic to the line pursued by Trump argue that the threat
from North Korea has existed for decades — and has been exacerbated by a lack of meaningful action against it.
Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, lamented that Pyongyang had “not suffered a bit of meaningful punishment” for a long history of misdeeds including assassination
attempts against the leadership of South Korea, the sinking of South
Korean ships and the deaths of American citizens.
Cheng added, “We, the rest of the world, have trained the North Korean leadership — not just in the case of Kim Jong Un, but for three
generations — that they basically can get away with anything.”
There is widespread agreement that the Trump administration’s best option
in the immediate future is to escalate pressure on Kim’s regime, short of military action.
The president expanded sanctions this week, seeking to force international banks to cease all significant interaction with North Korea.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters in New York Thursday that
the administration would also freeze the U.S. assets of “anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services, or technology with North Korea.”
More liberal voices suggest that the Trump administration needs to be
prepared to negotiate in a meaningful way with North Korea.
“We should do what the president says he is going to do — maximum pressure and maximum engagement,” said Cirincione. “We have the pressure. It’s time
for the engagement. You have got to walk back from the brink here. You’ve
got to start talking to North Korea to develop a compromise.”
Such a move, Cirincione said, would lower the risks of a “stumble into war.”
Fuchs, of the Center for American Progress, argued that, “We know how to
keep the peace but we are now raising the chances of another Korean War.”
But, for now, Trump appears convinced that the best path is to project
strength in the face of North Korean threats.
On Friday morning, he tweeted, “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is
obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will
be tested like never before!”
The world is watching to see what that means.
### - it's showdown in hoetown!
Fuchs?? a somewhat rather unfortunate name that innit hah...
imagine what to call your kids though? hmm tricky...
have you met my son... Never? :)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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