NORTH KOREA AND TRUMP’S NARROW VISION!

By

Harry C. Blaney III

Trump’s trip to Asia already has all the signs of a semi-fiasco with foreign policy public statements that appeared like they were written by a six year old for a class project. His unabashed self praise for his discussions with the Japan Prime Minister along with his continue bragging about what will happen to North Korea are all classic efforts to cover the fact that he has no deep and informed understanding of the complete and high risk issues at hand and thinks that just bragging, bulling and self-praise will save him from failure.

Further, he still does not realize that diplomatic agreements require both sides gain — called a win-win outcomes. These are the agreements that last.

The most chilling news on the North Korea front is that while Trump is pushing a more military solution, the US military leaders have stated in a letter to Congress that says that the only way to take out North Korea’s nuclear program with — quote — ‘complete certainty’ would be a ground invasion to secure and locate all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons sites ‘with complete certainty. They added in the event of conflict, Pyongyang could use biological and chemical weapons, the Pentagon told lawmakers in their current, candid assessment of what war on the Korean Peninsula might look like. We already know that various assessments of such a war would like mean the loss of millions of lives on all sides.

In this context, to show the absurdity of Trump focus’s, he is even encouraging the Japanese to buy billions of US manufactured weapons, which in my poor eyes amounts to asking them to send troops to fight a battle that Trump himself my have by his bellicose statements and actions only made sadly more likely. The Japanese know they are within striking distance of North Korea’s missiles.

There is urgent need for not only our more responsible leaders but also the heads of our Asian allies also to urge a diplomatic approach but the time is drawing short and risks rise as time goes by. In time talks with China, Russia, and South Korea leaders will indicate if we will go towards diplomacy to high risk options.  Trump still has no concept of or it seem desire to try to see that a peaceful resolution is in everyone’s best interest. Hope that is wrong! Congress also has to step in and there are moves in that direction.

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