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The Review: Trump Fails Charlottesville and America, Gambles Recklessly with North Korea

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When a neo-Nazi drives a car into a crowd of counter-protestors, kills a young woman and injures 34 others, you’d think it would be easy for any President to condemn the neo-Nazi, KKK, white supremacist protestors.  Not so for President Trump.  

Trump’s response?  “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."  Yes, the dead and injured – those who for some reason (the Declaration of Independence perhaps?) seem to think that all men and women are created equal, that racial and religious discrimination is evil – are equally guilty of hatred, bigotry and violence.  

Trump, of course, won’t call out the white supremacists because they are part of his political base.   That base is even represented in white nationalist White House aides Steve Bannon (who until recently operated the white nationalist Breitbart News website), Sebastian Gorka (repeatedly wearing a medal from an overtly anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II) and Steve Miller (a fierce advocate of white European “ethno-nationalism”).  

Although Trump’s aides have tried to claim that Trump condemns white supremacists, Trump himself has not done this.

What he did say publicly this week was that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.  They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen….” Trump said this during a meeting on opioids from his golf club in New Jersey, where, of course,  all major U.S. international proclamations are made.  

He seemed to be copying the style of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, who for years has made flamboyant threats, the vast majority of which are never carried out.  It’s much different when the world’s sole super power makes those kinds of threats, and our allies in Asia, including Japan and South Korea, are extremely nervous over this type of language.  

Trump seemed to be reacting to news that North Korea has produced nuclear warhead that can fit inside one of its intercontinental ballistic missiles that now have the range to strike the U.S.  Having nuclear-armed missiles survive reentry well enough to detonate is tricky business, but if North Korea isn’t there yet it likely will be in the next year or two.

There never was a peace treaty after the Korean war, only a cease-fire that remains in place to this day.  North Korea, which is vastly poorer than South Korea, rightly believes that in any conventional battle South Korea would have a huge edge.   South Korea also has the U.S. as an ally, one that has had the advantage of being able to attack North Korea from afar without North Korea being able to inflict damage on the U.S.  

Kim Jong-un believes that only by having nuclear weapons (North Korea is believed to have about 20 of them already) and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can strike the U.S. does he have any guarantee of remaining in power.   He may sound insane in many of his pronouncements (and probably is deliberately trying to sound crazy), but this is not an irrational analysis.  Given this, it is extraordinarily unlikely that North Korea will agree to give up its nuclear arms and ICBMs.

By making threats regarding North Korea – and threatening to start a trade war with China– Trump may be hoping to get China to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons.  China is by far North Korea’s major trading partner and therefore the only country to have any leverage with North Korea.  

But China is extremely concerned that too much pressure on North Korea could cause the collapse of the North Korean government and South Korea could step in to clean up the pieces.  The one thing that China absolutely does not want is a unified, pro-American Korea sharing its border.   Among other things, one could imagine the Chinese living along that border (who currently trade with North Korea) demanding larger wages, greater freedom and less official corruption with a thriving economy immediately next door.

It's extraordinarily unlikely that Trump can pressure China into taking steps that would result in North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons.

Nor can the U.S. successfully knock out North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles.  North Korea has been worried about this for years, and deliberately has built its nuclear facilities under mountains.  Neither “bunker buster” bombs nor nuclear weapons are going to destroy those facilities.  North Korean has also moved from liquid-fueled missiles – which often take hours to ready for launch –with solid-fuel missiles, which can launched more or less instantaneously.  

South Korea’s capital, Seoul, is only about 35 miles from the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea.  The North Koreans have spent years building artillery and missiles into caves in the mountains in that area.  Even without using nuclear weapons, North Korean could kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans before South Korea and the U.S. could locate and eliminate all those installations.

And North Korea could also launch nuclear missiles against South Korean, Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam at the very least.

Realistically, with North Korea the U.S. is going to have to settle in the “mutually assured destruction” mode that marked the standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  It wasn’t pleasant, but it worked:  Although it got too close during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. and Soviet Union never launched their nuclear weapons.  

The primary danger of “fire and fury” statements by Trump is that North Korea may conclude that a South Korean or U.S. attack is imminent – and launch a preemptive strike.  If hostilities start, even on a small basis at first, they could very easily ramp up into a full-scale war.


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