{"id":13966,"date":"2017-09-26T14:41:57","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T09:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/jwt2015\/?p=13966"},"modified":"2017-09-26T14:41:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T09:41:57","slug":"is-trump-all-talk-on-north-korea-the-uncertainty-sends-a-shiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/studykit\/currentaffairs\/daily-articles\/is-trump-all-talk-on-north-korea-the-uncertainty-sends-a-shiver\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Trump All Talk on North Korea? The Uncertainty Sends a Shiver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Is<\/a><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 When President Trump gave a fiery campaign speech in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday evening, he drew a rapturous roar by ridiculing Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as \u201cLittle Rocket Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among diplomats and national security specialists, the reaction was decidedly different. After Mr. Trump repeated his taunt in a tweet late Saturday and threatened that Mr. Kim and his foreign minister \u201cwon\u2019t be around much longer\u201d if they continue their invective against the United States, reactions ranged from nervous disbelief to sheer terror.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s willingness to casually threaten to annihilate a nuclear-armed foe was yet another reminder of the steep risks inherent in his brute-force approach to diplomacy. His strengths as a politician \u2014 the ability to appeal in a visceral way to the impulses of ordinary citizens \u2014 are a difficult fit for the meticulous calculations that his own advisers concede are crucial in dealing with Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

The disconnect has led to a deep uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump is all talk or actually intends to act. The ambiguity could be strategic, part of an effort to intimidate Mr. Kim and keep him guessing. Or it could reflect a rash impulse by a leader with little foreign policy experience to vent his anger and stoke his supporters\u2019 enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

His new chief of staff and his national security team have drawn a line at trying to rein in his more incendiary provocations, fearing that their efforts could backfire with a president who bridles at any effort to control him. What remains unclear \u2014 and the source of much of the anxiety in and out of the government and on both sides of the Pacific \u2014 is whether they would step in to prevent the president from taking the kind of drastic action that matches his words, if they believed it was imminent.<\/p>\n

Veterans of diplomacy and national security and specialists on North Korea fear that, whatever their intended result, Mr. Trump\u2019s increasingly bellicose threats and public insults of the famously thin-skinned Mr. Kim could cause the United States to careen into a nuclear confrontation driven by personal animosity and bravado.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does matter, because you don\u2019t want to get to a situation where North Korea fundamentally miscalculates that an attack is coming,\u201d said Sue Mi Terry, a former intelligence and National Security Council specialist who is now a senior adviser for Korea at Bower Group Asia. \u201cIt could lead us to stumble into a war that nobody wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while his bombast may be a thrill to Mr. Trump\u2019s core supporters, there is evidence that the broader American public does not trust the president to deal with North Korea, and is deeply opposed to the kind of pre-emptive military strike he has seemed eager to threaten.<\/p>\n

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 37 percent of adults trust Mr. Trump \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201ca good amount\u201d to responsibly handle the situation with North Korea, while 42 percent trust him \u201cnot at all.\u201d By contrast, 72 percent trust American military leaders, who have largely avoided combative language on North Korea even as they have said publicly that a military option is possible.<\/p>\n

Two-thirds of respondents opposed launching a pre-emptive attack against North Korea, while about three-quarters supported using tougher economic sanctions on Pyongyang as a way of pressuring the country to surrender its nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

Some senior administration officials acknowledge privately that Mr. Trump\u2019s rhetoric on North Korea is not helpful, although they question whether it will alter the discussion, given how far Mr. Kim has come in his quest to develop a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States.<\/p>\n

The three current and retired generals advising Mr. Trump \u2014 Jim Mattis, the defense secretary; Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, his national security adviser; and John F. Kelly, his chief of staff \u2014 as well as Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, have all chosen their words on North Korea more carefully, emphasizing the role of diplomacy and the grave stakes of any military confrontation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three of the generals fully realize the carnage that would result from a war on the Korean Peninsula,\u201d James G. Stavridis, the former NATO commander and current dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing each of them personally, I am certain they are counseling operational caution, measured public commentary and building a coalition approach to dealing with Kim Jong-un,\u201d Mr. Stavridis, a retired admiral, said in an email. \u201cBut controlling President Trump seems incredibly difficult. Let\u2019s hope they are not engaged in mission impossible, because the stakes are so high.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christopher R. Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea who served Republican and Democratic presidents, argued that the comments could badly undercut Mr. Trump\u2019s ability to find a peaceful solution to the dispute, playing into Mr. Kim\u2019s characterization of the United States as an evil nation bent on North Korea\u2019s destruction and relieving pressure on the Chinese to do more to curb Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe comments give the world the sense that he is increasingly unhinged and unreliable,\u201d said Mr. Hill, the dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hill, who as envoy to South Korea under George W. Bush was the last American to hold formal talks with the government in Pyongyang, said he and Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, routinely advised Mr. Bush to \u201cavoid the personal invectives,\u201d because \u201cthey never help.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sense from four years of those talks is that getting personal is not helpful,\u201d Mr. Hill said. \u201cWho could be telling Trump otherwise?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet current and former senior officials said it was clear that Mr. Trump would continue his brinkmanship, particularly his belligerent tweets, no matter what his advisers do or say. One former administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy workings, said nobody, including Mr. Kelly, could control the president\u2019s social media utterances, despite what his military advisers thought about them.<\/p>\n

The tweets most likely have forced Mr. Mattis and Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as other national security officials, to spend a significant amount of time on the phone reassuring counterparts about Mr. Trump\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n

Last week, Mr. Trump coined his mocking nickname for Mr. Kim on Twitter and insisted on including it in his maiden speech to the United Nations General Assembly. \u201cRocket Man,\u201d he said, \u201cis on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime,\u201d which may leave the United States \u201cno choice than to totally destroy North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speech drew audible gasps from the diplomats and national security officials in the General Assembly hall, as well as an angry response from Mr. Kim himself, who called Mr. Trump a \u201cmentally deranged U.S. dotard.\u201d A few days later, a capacity crowd at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville delighted in Mr. Trump\u2019s warlike language, cheering as he renewed his threats and added a dig at Mr. Kim\u2019s stature.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe should have been handled a long time ago,\u201d Mr. Trump said, \u201cbut I\u2019m going to handle it because we have to handle it: Little Rocket Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure he\u2019s listening, because he watches every word,\u201d Mr. Trump added. \u201cHe\u2019s watching us like he never watched anybody before, that I can tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president appeared to be right about that. On Saturday, Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho of North Korea said in a speech at the United Nations that the president\u2019s threats were \u201cmaking our rocket\u2019s visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is what appeared to have prompted the nighttime tweet from Mr. Trump, who spent the weekend at his Bedminster, N.J., golf resort. \u201cIf he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote of Mr. Ri, \u201cthey won\u2019t be around much longer!\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Terry said such menacing talk could put Mr. Trump into a box. \u201cTrump is limiting our own options by behaving and speaking like this, because now we either have to act, which really is unthinkable, or we\u2019re going to look like a paper tiger because we can\u2019t act,\u201d she said. \u201cInternationally, we look foolish, and now he has made it extremely personal, so Kim Jong-un cannot back down. It\u2019s reckless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of Mr. Trump\u2019s allies argue that his behavior is strategic, a way of telegraphing to North Korea \u2014 and to its primary patron, China \u2014 that the United States is taking a tougher line under this administration. There may be wisdom, they argue, in spurring fear and confusion in the mind of a leader who frequently relies on both.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re dealing with somebody that we\u2019ll figure out,\u201d Mr. Trump said at the rally on Friday. \u201cHe may be smart, he may be strategic \u2014 and he may be totally crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

By: JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS<\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 When President Trump gave a fiery campaign speech in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday evening, he drew a rapturous roar by ridiculing Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as \u201cLittle Rocket Man.\u201d Among diplomats and national security specialists, the reaction was decidedly different. After Mr. Trump repeated his taunt in a tweet late Saturday …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5285],"tags":[257,8438,1226,610,4445],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}