Breathe

Our granddaughter, Jemma, was born yesterday. Beauty and perfection beyond the imagination.

And the news is filled with tweets from our president taunting one of the few world leaders we can all agree is even more unstable than our president…a leader who, like our president, also has nuclear weapons…and a habit of talking without thinking.

26 million live and work in Seoul. 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea (not to mention those on the two huge military bases in Guam). Massive conventional weapons pointed at Seoul that can be fired in less than one minute. Plus both nuclear and chemical weapons capabilities. NK also has a nuclear submarine.

"Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!" 

In an interview he added that if the NK regime even says anything threatening, we will attack. I would like to criticize the president for drawing a red line that no sane person would cross, but that might encourage him to continue down the insane path he has created.

Al Jazzera reports that China has signaled it will remain neutral if the US retaliates to a NK attack. This is the long-sought ‘more proactive Chinese intervention’ and it has gone largely unnoticed in the US (though likely not unnoticed to the NK leadership).

“A Chinese state-run newspaper…said on Friday that Washington and Pyongyang were playing a ‘reckless game’ that could lead to ‘miscalculations and a strategic war’.

‘China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the US retaliates, China will stay neutral,’ the editorial said.

However, it added: ‘If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.’

A more proactive China cuts both ways.

A  Fox News commentary (written in June to criticize Chinese inaction as well as the inaction of previous presidents) estimates one likely scenario includes tens of millions dead in a (short) second Korean War.

A Business Insider piece (written yesterday and using celebratory language to describe an ‘awesome’ US attack that is largely successful—very detailed piece written almost like a movie scrip) notes that “Mattis himself admitted that that a fight with North Korea would be "more serious in terms of human suffering" than anything since the original Korean War ended in 1953 and "a war that fundamentally we don't want."

“North Korea would most likely destroy some US military installations, lay waste to some small portion of Seoul, and get a handful of missiles fired….

In the end, it would be a brutal, bloody conflict….

Even after a devastating missile attack, some of North Korea's nuclear stockpile would most likely remain hidden. Some element of the remaining North Korean forces could stage a retaliation….”

On Vox a journalist from South Korea argues that “North Korea. Like, the United States owns nuclear weapons, but why is North Korea in the axis of evil that doesn't get to because it's supposed to be the less rational one? I’m just generally afraid of nuclear weapons in general. I’m just as afraid of Trump owning nuclear weapons as Kim Jong Un owning one.”

“Seoul’s 25.6 million residents are in direct firing range of thousands of pieces of North Korean artillery already lined up along the border. And around 70 percent of North Korea’s ground forces are within 90 miles of the border, ready to move south at a moment’s notice. One war game convened by the Atlantic magazine back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul in the first few days alone.”

The Washington Post asked several experts if this increase in tension is unlike the many previous times tensions have spiked.

One experts notes that engaging in a ‘childish shouting match’ and ‘irresponsibly throwing out threats of nuclear attack’ do worsen the situation because NK is not suicidal enough to launch a first attack unless it believes it faces a first attack from the US.

A second scholar says the heated rhetoric remains the same as in the past, with both sides saying they are ready to respond if attacked first.

A third notes that “in this kind of brinkmanship the potential for miscalculation is high, particularly relating to the assessment of what constitutes imminent hostile intent by the other side and their likely reaction to a given, potentially escalatory, action.”

A fourth concludes that the rhetorical heat is not that new, but “the turmoil present in the current U.S. administration and apparent lack of restraint in formulating a cohesive response do introduce new challenges to coming back down.”

A former South Korean foreign minister noted that

“The biggest risks in a situation like this one are misunderstanding, misperception and overreaction. It’s crucial to lower the possibility of these three from occurring. 

The fact that both President Trump and Kim Jong Un share a leadership style that values unpredictability raises chances of misunderstanding and/or misperception. It is important that the U.S. does not push North Korea into a dead end so they feel they are left with no options.

During the Cuban missile crisis, former president Kennedy made sure the U.S. didn’t box in Khrushchev in order to maintain peace. It is very concerning that there are divisions inside the Trump administration in policy toward North Korea.”

A sixth agrees that the heat of the rhetoric is not all that new, and that  

“…the probability of conflict actually breaking out remains low. Kim Jong Un is not suicidal.

While the Post’s headline today was “Trump escalates rhetoric,” in truth he went from threatening responses if they said bad things (which they immediately did, re Guam) to if they did bad things against the U.S. or allies (or “anybody that we love”).

That brings him more in line with Mattis and with long-standing U.S. policy, not to initiate hostilities but to respond with great force if attacked.”

And this means, like President Obama with chemical weapons in Syria, President Trump announced a bright red line and has already backed off from allowing its crossing to trigger the response he promised.

I take little comfort in this tit-for-tat analytical angle, however, and continue to worry that Jemma has joined a race on the path to our own destruction.

I do not want to score points by focusing on erased red lines that reinforce my own conclusion that President Trump has been and remains unfit for office. At this point, I want to avoid a nuclear war. And I hope that this brinksmanship experience then results in others in US leadership rallying around constraining or removing this president from office.