Trump’s nuclear war threat against North Korea

US President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against the impoverished and oppressed nation of North Korea has sent shockwaves of dread and anxiety around the world.

The very week that survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were marking the 72nd anniversary of the US atomic bombings that killed nearly a quarter million Japanese men, women and children, the American president interrupted his golf vacation to threaten a nuclear war in Asia with incalculable consequences for all of humanity.

A senior White House aide tried to play down the chilling implications of Trump’s statement, telling the media that the president’s comment had been “unplanned and spontaneous,” while US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Americans they “should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days.”

Yet even as these less than convincing reassurances were being uttered, Trump’s defense secretary, the former Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, routinely referred to by the media as the “adult in the room” and a force for moderation, echoed the president’s threat. He demanded Wednesday that North Korea “cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.” The meaning is unmistakable: bow to Washington’s demands or face nuclear annihilation.

Trump himself followed up his earlier threat with a tweet Wednesday boasting of Washington’s ability to prosecute a nuclear war. “My first order as president was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal,” he declared. “It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before. Hopefully we will never…