If John Bolton is still a true believer when it comes to the doctrine of crusading regime change, then Mike Pompeo is exactly the diplomat in chief to sell it to an intellectually unengaged president, a largely AWOL Congress, and a distracted public. All the pieces will soon be in place for the next disaster.
The current crisis in Korea is highly unstable. North Korean military plans depend entirely upon moving first. At the moment, the North Korean regime's only hope of survival in the event of war lies in its capacity to inflict so much damage that the United States and its allies will back off and negotiate rather than prolong a conflict.
Should Pyongyang decide that a U.S. attack is coming, it will strike south hard and fast. Similarly, Americans know that the only hope of preventing horrendous damage to their allies, and perhaps also to their own troops in the region, is to catch North Korea off guard with a massive blow of their own.
U.S. and North Korean forces have not been in sufficient contact to make inadvertent war highly likely therefore should war break out, it would most likely be the result of a deliberate choice in Washington.
How close is the Trump administration to choosing war? Trump himself is a hawk and he has publicly complained about the Pentagon's inability to give him plans that he likes that he is actively interested in military options.
Previously he dismissed negotiations as "pointless" and repeatedly insisted that the North Korean problem "will be solved."
And while the public remains focused on the Trump's outlandish behavior, his team could be planning a new war that will put all the others to shame.
Would trump take the risk of a nuclear war because he doesn't "want you to be killed with a nuclear weapon?" No, but he would take the risk of millions of South Koreans and Japanese lives in order to get the respect, admiration and trust that he believes he deservers.
(Article changed on June 18, 2018 at 15:47)
(Article changed on June 19, 2018 at 04:09)
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