WAR OF WORDS
Some fear rhetoric on North Korea could be counterproductive
President Donald Trump’s bombastic threat to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea if it continues threatening the United States isn’t entirely unprecedented. Historians point out the similarities to President Harry Truman’s threats to further bomb Japan during World War II even after the U.S. had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. But experts say Trump’s statements are likely to be counterproductive because he doesn’t have any plausible military options for backing them up. Trump has also already earned an international reputation for blustering, and critics have called his “fire and fury” remark against the North Korean regime reckless.
WASHINGTON President Trump’s use of apocalyptic imagery in threatening “fire and fury” against North Korea represented some of the most bellicose language uttered by any president since World War II.
“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 Tuesday.
That statement, in response to reports that the communist regime had developed a warhead capable of being mounted on a ballistic missile, mirrored a North Korean propaganda machine that once threatened to turn the South Korean capital into a “sea of fire.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday that the president’s words were designed to send a clear message to North Korea’s enigmatic leader “in language that Kim Jong Un can understand.”
But tension escalated Thursday on the Korean Peninsula. North Korean Gen. Kim Raj Gyom repeated a threat to target the U.S. territory of Guam with what he called “historic enveloping fire” from four ballistic missiles.
He called Trump’s warning “a load of nonsense” and said, “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason, and only absolute force can work on him.”
The escalating war of words raises worries of a high-stakes