{"id":103725,"date":"2017-09-07T17:03:10","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T23:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-is-threatening-some-kind-of-war-with-north-korea\/"},"modified":"2017-09-07T17:03:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T23:03:10","slug":"trump-is-threatening-some-kind-of-war-with-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-is-threatening-some-kind-of-war-with-north-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is threatening some kind of war with North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"George
George F. Will<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dating from the detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, the basic science of nuclear explosions is more than 72 years old \u2013 three years older than the North Korean nation. Ballistic missile technology is more than 60 years old. The problems of miniaturizing warheads for mounting on missiles, and of ensuring the warheads\u2019 survival en route to targets, are not sufficient to stymie a nation \u2013 consider Pakistan, whose annual per-capita income is less than $2,000 \u2013 that is determined to have a nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

North Korea has one and is developing ICBMs faster than expected and with ostentatious indifference to U.S. proclamations. On Jan. 2, President-elect Donald Trump scampered up the rhetorical escalation ladder, unlimbering his heavy artillery \u2013 an exclamation point \u2013 to tweet about North Korea\u2019s promised ICBM test: \u201cIt won\u2019t happen!\u201d It did. North Korea\u2019s most audacious act, firing a missile over Japan, came seven days after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson praised North Korea\u2019s \u201crestraint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pyongyang\u2019s \u201csignaling\u201d does not involve abstruse semiotics: It wants a nuclear arsenal, and as The Economist magazine says, the world\u2019s unpalatable options are the improbable (productive negotiations), the feeble (more sanctions) and the terrifying (military pre-emption). Concerning the latter, there is no bright line, but there is a distinction to be drawn, however imprecisely, between pre-emptive war and preventive war. The former constitutes self-defense in response to a clear and present danger \u2013 repelling an act of aggression presumed with reasonable certainty to be imminent. The latter is an act of anticipation \u2013 and, to be candid, of aggression \u2013 to forestall the emergence of a clear and present danger.<\/p>\n

When Trump threatened North Korea with \u201cfire and fury like the world has never seen,\u201d was he threatening to cross the nuclear weapons threshold? This has been contemplated before regarding North Korea. Former Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had been fired by President Harry Truman for insubordination, handed President-elect Dwight Eisenhower a memorandum on how \u201cto clear North Korea of enemy forces\u201d: \u201cThis could be accomplished through the atomic bombing of enemy military concentrations and installations in North Korea and the sowing of fields of suitable radio-active materials, the by-product of atomic manufacture, to close major lines of enemy supply and communication. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

MacArthur badly misjudged Eisenhower, whose biographer, Jean Edward Smith, says that during the Potsdam Conference (July 17-Aug. 2, 1945), when Eisenhower was told of the Alamogordo test \u2013 his first knowledge of the new weapon \u2013 \u201che was appalled\u201d and \u201cwas the only one at Potsdam who opposed using the bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith says: \u201cAs president, Eisenhower would twice be presented with recommendations from his National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the bomb be used; first, in Vietnam to protect the French at Dien Bien Phu, then against China at the time of the Formosa Strait crisis. Both times, Eisenhower rejected the recommendations. As a former supreme commander, Eisenhower had the confidence to do so, where other presidents might not have. And by rejecting the use of the bomb, there is no question that Eisenhower raised the threshold at which atomic weaponry could be employed \u2013 a legacy we continue to enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for how long? The non-proliferation regime has been remarkably successful. During the 1960 presidential campaign, John Kennedy cited \u201cindications\u201d that by 1964, there would be \u201c10, 15 or 20\u201d nuclear powers. As president, he said that by 1975, there might be 20. Now, however, North Korea, the ninth, might be joined by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, among others, unless U.S. leadership produces, regarding North Korea, conspicuously credible deterrence. The reservoir of presidential credibility is not brimful.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 1, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that Trump had told him that \u201cthere will be a war with North Korea\u201d if it continues to develop ICBMs capable of reaching the United States. \u201cWe\u2019ll see,\u201d said Trump on Sunday, responding to this shouted question: \u201cWill you attack North Korea?\u201d You?<\/p>\n

Are Congress\u2019 constitutional powers regarding war so atrophied that it supinely hopes for mere post facto notification? Ten months after Nov. 8, that day\u2019s costs, until now largely aesthetic, are suddenly, although not altogether unpredictably, more serious than were perhaps contemplated by his 62,984,825 voters.<\/p>\n

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post. Reach him by email at georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>. \u00a9 2017 The Washington Post Writers Group<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

F. Will Dating from the detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, the basic science of nuclear explosions is more than 72 years old \u2013 three years older than the North Korean nation. Ballistic missile technology is more than 60 years old. The problems of miniaturizing warheads for mounting on missiles, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6334],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-guest-columns","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103725"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}