No doubt some of you may have been wondering why I have not blogged anything on this issue since it appears to be a hot topic today, and I have been harping on it in previous blogs. Frankly, I wanted to wait and see if there would be any further developments before I launched into my views on the issue. However, it appears that for the time being things are somewhat at a stalemate despite all the threatening rhetoric that is being tossed about.
I believe that the United States has taken on a new stand on North Korea in more than two decades. The problem with North Korea and the nuclear issue surfaced first during Clinton Administration when the looney Kim Jong Il, the father of the current wacko Kim Jong Un, first made noise about nuclear weapons development. Clinton supposedly came up with a deal with North Korea that would keep North Korea in check, but that deal was about as solid as the recent Iran deal that Obama made, and Kim Jong Il continued with his nuclear weapons program. For the rest of Clinton administration, nothing much was done. George W. Bush tried a few things but his efforts went nowhere and North Korea continued with its program while our government kept putting the problem aside and dealing with other things. Obama's administration was even worst than Clinton and Bush in this regard. Obama had no policy, no plan on how to deal with North Korea. When the current North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un took over and thumbed his nose at everyone and speeded-up the nuclear development, aside from showing alarm, the Obama administration did nothing. This lack of any kind of action by Obama led to the current situation. Yes, Clinton was at fault as well as George W., but it was largely Obama with his "wait and see" foreign policy that led to the current situation.
Despite all that show of force and strong language, I do not believe that North Korea is going to launch any kind of a nuclear attack. They most certainly won't launch any missiles against the United States, even if they did have ICBMs that can reach our shores. There are some "experts" that say they have the ICBMs, others who say they don't. Whatever the case may be, and as crazy as Kim Jong Un may seem to be, he is not going to commit suicide. He may risk millions of lives of his people, he is quite capable of doing that, but he won't risk his own life and the total destruction of North Korea, after all, as poor and miserable as that place is, that is all that he has! Kim Jong Un knows that if he launches a nuclear strike against the United States, the retaliation by us will completely destroy the northern half of the Korean peninsula, and he won't survive the attack!
If he launches a nuclear strike against South Korea or Japan, he knows that he will pay dearly for the act. The United States may respond in kind and launch a selective nuclear strike, or we could launch a strike with those huge MOABs, the "mother of all bombs" that we just dropped in Afghanistan. It would be enough for just a couple of those bombs to completely wipe out North Korean Command and Control and infrastructure. These bombs will destroy just as much as a nuclear device without causing radiation problems after the attack. Despite denials, the purpose of dropping that MOAB in Afghanistan was not just to show ISIS that we have a very long and deep reach, but to send a clear message to Kim Jong Un, and anyone else, for that matter! You can be sure he got the message despite all the bluster and threats.
China, for the first time appears to be serious about trying to help reign-in North Korea. Stopping the coal shipments and canceling flights is but a drop in the bucket. But these gestures are a beginning. Obviously Trump's long talk with Xi in Florida has had an effect. We don't know what was exactly said or promised, but it seems the talks were fruitful. The same goes for Tillerson's two hour talk with Putin behind closed doors. Despite the guarded statement by Tillerson, saying that our relations with Russia were at its lowest point, I believe he managed to get through to Putin and come up with some mutual agreements.
Kim Jong Un may be living in his own fantasy world, but he is aware of what has been happening and what Trump and his administration has been doing. Trump critics are all saying that he is leading us to World War Three, that it will be Armageddon! Others are saying that Trump's policies are going to cause North Korea to launch a nuclear strike, perhaps at us, but at the very least at South Korea. All of these dire predictions are possibilities, after all, anything is possible. But most of these criticisms of Trump's policy toward North Korea are politically motivated and are coming from Democrats and the liberal left. But chances of North Korea attacking the United States are very slim now, much less so than they were during Obama administration. The reason? Good or bad, Trump's policy toward North Korea is basically that we won't tolerate their misbehavior. If they threaten, we will threaten. If they strike, we most certainly will strike back. Such was not the case in previous years, that is why it was much more dangerous! It may seem like child's play, playground politics. Well, that is precisely what it is, and for now the bully in the playground (Kim Jong Un) has been told that a bigger kid will come and smack him if he doesn't behave.
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