Who is crazier, Donald Trump or North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un?
Where are the grownups? We’ve come to expect childish behavior from Donald Trump, the bully-in-chief who attacks and belittles anyone who challenges him. But this week’s game of nuclear roulette with equally egocentric and pathologically defensive Kim Jong-Un goes magnitudes beyond the norm.
Where was Chief of Staff John Kelly Tuesday when Trump was threatening a pre-emptive nuclear strike against North Korea? Where were Rex Tillerson, James Mattis and the rest when news broke that North Korea might have a miniaturized nuclear weapon that could fit on its missiles? Surely these smart men should have seen what was coming from their own fearless leader?
When the president chose his defense and foreign policy teams, conservatives told Americans not to worry. These were experienced hands who would stop the president from doing anything reckless. Maybe they meant physically keeping his finger off the button — but playing make-my-day with Kim risks goading him to strike first.
The confrontation with North Korea screams for a diplomatic solution, and the Trump administration had been on that path. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s measured policy statements won unanimous support, including China and Russia, for harsh new United Nations sanctions over the latest missile tests.
But when Trump encountered reporters at his New Jersey golf resort Tuesday, he blustered:
“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.”
It’s impossible to read this as anything but a threat of a preemptive nuclear strike.
North Korea responded predictably with a more specific threat, suggesting it would attack Guam, an American territory 2,000 miles southeast of Pyongyang.
Tillerson tried to allay fears. “Nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours. Americans should sleep well at night.” But he also defended Trump, saying the president had sent “a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-Un would understand.”
Even worse, Defense Secretary James Mattis egged Trump on, saying Wednesday that “the DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”
Posturing like this might be benign with a less volatile enemy. But more than one foreign policy expert has warned that you can’t “out-crazy” Kim Jong-Un.
As for Kelly? Kelly was reportedly sitting directly across the table, stone-faced, when Trump issued his threat.
Even if Korea’s nukes could not reach our West Coast, effects on America’s most important allies and trading partners in the region would be devastating. South Korea would be all but destroyed. Japan would be in grave peril.
In 2016, U.S. firms exported $63 billion in goods to Japan and $43 billion to South Korea. They are the third and 11th largest economies in the world. These are American interests at stake.
Where are the grownups in the White House?