'There’s nothing particularly unusual about this sort of creative, bellicose rhetoric from the North Korean regime, which routinely threatens to do things like turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” or fire“nuclear-armed missiles at the White House and the Pentagon.” North Korea needs to be taken seriously as a hostile regime in artillery range of close U.S. allie. But there’s a long track record of unrealized threats. In that context, the probability that any given one will be realized is quite small.What’s different now is Donald Trump. Whereas many of his predecessors steered sedulously clear of escalatory rhetoric, Trump has threatened North Korea via Twitter, declaring that the regime is “looking for trouble.” But it’s equally apparent that the kind of massive conflagration on the Korean peninsula that world leaders are now warning against has been avoided since 1953.'
At www.theatlantic.com
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