Sunday 8 October 2017

Trump's latest threat to North Korea

Only "one thing will work with North Korea", says Trump in a new tweet. The US president really knows how to tease, doesn't he? What does he mean by this and, more importantly, what will Kim Jong-un think he means by this? Everyone naturally assumes Trump is talking about the use of force. This phrase has been used before to warn Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gaddafi etc etc. So Trump has finally decided that all this diplomatic sanctions stuff is never going to stop the North Korean dictator from building his nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, and it's time for action. Send in the Marines!! Or, much more likely, send in the B2s and B52s. Well, no. I don't think that's what Trump has in mind. I'm pretty sure that Jim Mattis, that cunning old fox running the Pentagon, has produced an option for action that is far more subtle. The one thing that MIGHT work with North Korea is the removal of Kim Jong-un, or, as the director of the CIA said recently, the separation of the North Korean leader and his inner circle from the rest of the population. Now, "separation" is a highly ambiguous word in this sort of context. Does it mean annihilation, capture or something to do with cyber targeting, in other words, separating Kim Jong-un, by cyber attack, from his military commanders and rocket operators? If that's the case, then what Trump meant when he said that only one thing will work with North Korea was a scenario in which Kim Jong-un is somehow deprived of his powers to attack or retaliate against the United States or its allies in the region. Separate the leader from his deadly powers, then total confusion reigns. It's a clever idea but I'd love to know how Mattis and his cyber advisers plan to carry this out. If things get more and more dangerous in North Korea, we might wake up one morning to find that Kim Jong-un has mysteriously disappeared! Trump's tweet will have set Kim thinking...I think.

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