Trump administration recklessly escalating the conflict with Korea
17 April 2017
The danger of a military conflict between the United States and North Korea continued to escalate throughout the weekend. Far from seeking to lessen tensions between the two countries, the Trump administration continued to employ rhetoric that signaled the possibility of imminent military action by the United States.
On Sunday, North Korea reportedly test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile, but this launch failed. The American media is speculating that covert US-organized sabotage may have been responsible. Trump administration officials have refused to deny or acknowledge involvement, but the US has been developing such techniques directed at North Korea for several years.
Trump’s national security advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, declared Sunday morning on ABC’s This Week program that the “situation just can’t continue.” He added, “The president has made very clear that he is not in the business of announcing in advance exactly what he’s going to do.”
This deliberate ambiguity about US intentions serves no other purpose than to increase North Korean fears that an American preemptive military strike is being prepared. It heightens the danger of events spinning out of control.
The fact that no one really knows what the Trump administration will do next makes the situation even more dangerous than during the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s. During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, as has been thoroughly documented in historical accounts, the Kennedy administration was extremely fearful that its actions might be misinterpreted by the Soviet Union, thus precipitating a nuclear exchange.
No such concern is evident today. Moreover, the danger is intensified by…