Trump Must Not Lose His Head

Such arrogance, all the same!

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been the target of threats from the president of the world’s largest power, but he is not afraid. He has not even tried to be forgotten about. Instead, he has just added to the situation.

He ordered a sixth nuclear test and this time, his country said, it tested a hydrogen bomb. It’s a more powerful weapon than the one that exploded during the most recent North Korean test, in January 2016, experts confirmed. And it is at least three times more powerful than the one that devastated Hiroshima in 1945. Add to that the fact that Kim Jong Un tests his missiles with the enthusiasm of a child who has just received a new toy (while perfecting them), and you get a particularly explosive cocktail. It was recently pointed out that he has already launched more missiles in 2017 than his father, Kim Jong Il, did during his entire 17-year reign.

The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said that the new North Korean nuclear test has “slapped everyone [countries] in the face in the international community that has asked them to stop” their provocations. And with good reason. She was also right to demand new sanctions against this rogue state. But let’s see if China and Russia share this opinion when the sanctions are put to a U.N. Security Council vote. That being said, few believe that these sanctions will change anything with regard to the belligerent intentions of the North Korean regime. They simply will not be enough.

So, should the Trump administration use its military superiority to make Kim Jong Un yield, as the U.S. president has already suggested? Short answer: That would be dangerous. Even Steve Bannon, who until recently was the American president’s chief strategist, is convinced of that. “There is no military solution, forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here. They got us,” he said last month.

So, what do we do? We have to talk. This is the lesser evil of all potentially effective options for breaking the North Korean impasse. Several key members of the U.S. administration, including the secretary of state and the Pentagon leader, say they are still in favor of a diplomatic solution. But first, they will obviously have to convince their own president of the merits of such an approach. Will his allies on the international stage and his close advisors persuade him that, in the case of North Korea, impulsiveness and aggressiveness could indeed lead to “a global catastrophe,” as Vladimir Putin said yesterday?

The outcome of the current crisis seems to be directly related to Donald Trump’s ability to respond tactfully to the North Korean “slap in the face” and Kim Jong Un’s arrogance.