The Korea missile crisis
“How did we get here,” asked Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. Why does it suddenly appear that we’re “on the brink of a war in Asia”? From the start, President Trump’s administration “has wanted to look tough on North Korea”. But when the latest crisis blew up – precipitated by reports that Pyongyang had developed an intercontinental ballistic missile, and a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on it – Trump’s reaction was “deeply worrying and dangerous”. He threatened to bring down “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea; when pressed on the issue, he doubled down, promising that “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded”, should Kim Jong Un “act unwisely”. Throughout his career, Trump has made “grandiose promises and ominous threats”. The problem is that “he is no longer a businessman trying to browbeat someone into a deal”, said The New York Times. “He commands the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world, and any miscalculation could be catastrophic.”
There is, in fact, method in Trump’s madness, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. For nearly 25 years, Pyongyang has been “stringing America along”. Deals were struck in 1994, 2007 and 2012 to “encourage or bribe” North Korea to drop its nuclear ambitions. Each time it carried on regardless. Now that its nuclear missiles could strike America, is it really so unreasonable for Trump to give up on “the old cycle of talks, treaties and treachery”? The key to a solution is China, whose food and fuel keep North Korea viable. “Trump’s rhetoric is intended for Beijing, not Pyongyang.” He wants to convince the Chinese that his administration really might do something “rash”, whether it’s starting a war or encouraging America’s allies in South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons. There are signs that the strategy is working: China recently agreed to help impose sanctions, and now appears to accept that it must put pressure on Pyongyang to disarm.
Ultimately, though, Trump’s position is a bluff, said Jeffrey Lewis in Foreign Policy. “There is no credible military option.” North Korea has as many as 60 nuclear weapons, not to mention a vast conventional arsenal. “Do you really think US strikes could get them all? That not a single one would survive to land on Seoul, Tokyo or New York?” That leaves two options, said The Washington Post. One is to assemble a coalition of nations to impose economic sanctions so punitive that Kim decides he would be better off making a deal. The other is “to live with a nuclear North Korea, as we have long lived with a nuclear China” – deterring its use of those weapons by assuring Kim that his state would be annihilated in retaliation. Our view is that it is worth trying the former before accepting the latter. But it will require “patience, diplomacy, coherence and quiet strength. Just to list those qualities is to acknowledge how unlikely success seems at this moment.”