{"id":41566,"date":"2023-01-12T12:29:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T20:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=41566"},"modified":"2023-01-12T12:29:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T20:29:34","slug":"remembering-how-close-we-came-to-disaster-with-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/12\/remembering-how-close-we-came-to-disaster-with-north-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering How Close We Came to Disaster With North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US and North Korea came dangerously close to war during Trump\u2019s presidency. This is often discounted or forgotten in assessments of Trump\u2019s foreign policy record because the war didn\u2019t happen and Trump then made a big show of meeting with Kim Jong-un, but the crisis was real and war was much closer than most people realize. As Van Jackson has written in On the Brink<\/i><\/a>, \u201cThe world was perilously close to nuclear conflict in 2017.\u201d That the crisis ended and war was averted was a lucky development that happened in spite of US policy at the time. As Jackson notes, \u201cthe policy of maximum pressure was the catalyst of the nuclear crisis, not the cause of its end.\u201d Had it not been for the diplomatic efforts of the South Korean government, there could very well have been a major war on the Peninsula that probably would have dwarfed any war the US has fought at least since Vietnam. <\/p>\n

Some people may object that Trump\u2019s \u201cfire and fury\u201d rhetoric was always empty and he never seriously meant any of it, but that is hard to believe. A new report<\/a> gives another example of how Trump spoke privately about the possibility of attacking North Korea, including the option of a nuclear first strike:<\/p>\n

Behind closed doors in 2017, President Donald Trump discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and suggested he could blame a US strike against the communist regime on another country, according to a new section of a book that details key events of his administration.<\/i><\/p>\n

The claim rings true. It not only lines up with the deranged threats that Trump was making publicly during this same period, but it fits with how Trump talks and thinks about the use of force against other countries. Just last year, Trump \u201cjoked\u201d that the US should \u201cbomb the shit\u201d<\/a> out of Russia and then blame China for it. It is a classic Trump proposal: extremely aggressive, heedless of consequences, and eager to shift responsibility to someone else for his actions. It may be possible to distract Trump from following through on his crackpot notions, but it is important to remember that his first instinct is to attack.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at SubStack<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US and North Korea came dangerously close to war during Trump\u2019s presidency. This is often discounted or forgotten in assessments of Trump\u2019s foreign policy record because the war didn\u2019t happen and Trump then made a big show of meeting with Kim Jong-un, but the crisis was real and war was much closer than most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-41566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Instead of recognizing the folly of linking maximalist goals with \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d sanctions, the U.S. has retained both while dismissing engagement as a waste of time."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41566"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41569,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41566\/revisions\/41569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41566"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=41566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}