Fear of missiles and words

ON SOME emotional level, one might be able to see why Donald Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States. The North’s nuclear programme is a growing menace, its warmongering tirades are unquestionably unnerving, and peaceful solutions to the threat it poses have been maddeningly elusive over many years and many American administrations.

But Trump is president of the US and if prudent, disciplined leadership was ever required, it is now. Rhetorically stomping his feet, as he did on Tuesday, is not just irresponsible; it is dangerous. He is no longer a businessman trying to browbeat someone into a deal. He commands the most powerful nuclear and conventional arsenal in the world, and any miscalculation could be catastrophic.

Even if Trump’s provocative remarks were part of a deliberate strategy for ratcheting up pressure on North Korea – and on China, which as the North’s main food and fuel supplier has more influence on it than any other nation – they would be at odds with the measured approach of his predecessors. This is a president who has shown no clear grasp of complex strategic issues.

As The Times reported Wednesday, his inflammatory words were entirely improvised and took his closest associates by surprise. Intentionally or not, they echoed President Harry Truman’s 1945 pledge to inflict a “rain of ruin from the air” if Japan did not surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped at Hiroshima, which made them seem even more ominous.

Trump and his aides must have anticipated that he would be asked about North Korea after the UN Security Council tightened sanctions on Saturday after the North’s latest missile tests. Why, then, didn’t his team of generals – who know well the perils of war – caution him about better ways to signal toughness and about the dangers of idle threats?