Trump’s threats at UN to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea demonstrate little relationship with reality
Donald Kirk writes that Trump’s over-the-top declaration can’t hide the fact that military action against the North would be deeply unpopular at home, costly and opposed by North Korea’s neighbours
It wasn’t exactly a declaration of war, but it did come close. What else to make of US President Donald Trump’s remark that the US might “totally destroy North Korea?” It was one thing to belittle Kim Jong-un as “rocket man” but quite another to threaten annihilation of a country torn apart by US warplanes in the first Korean war.
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If nothing else, Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly will be remembered as one of those classic moments at which a head of state spoke for shock effect to a more or less captive audience. His words were reminiscent of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1960 banging a shoe in protest against a speech, or Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat in 1974 wearing a pistol belt, saying he carried “an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter’s gun in the other”.
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Just as such words rang hollow, bearing little relationship to the ability of those loud-talking figures to carry out their rhetorical threats, so Trump’s remarks also seem a little removed from reality. Is he really ready to order “massive retaliation” needed to destroy an impoverished country of 25 million? Might he order air strikes on the North’s nuclear and missile facilities, many hidden in caves and tunnel complexes? How carefully has he thought through the consequences?
For Trump, the gulf between rhetoric and reality is often quite wide
For Trump, the gulf between rhetoric and reality is often quite wide. He’s encountered tremendous difficulties doing away with Obamacare, the affordable health care plan instituted under president Barack Obama, and he’s far from fulfilling his vows to keep out a flood of immigrants. His presidency could fall apart on whatever decisions he makes on North Korea.
Let’s imagine, hypothetically, the consequences of a pre-emptive strike on a missile facility. Would North Korean artillery really open up on Seoul and Incheon, as forecast? Might Kim Jong-un order missile shots aimed at the US military base at Pyongtaek? Would the North Koreans launch mid-range missiles in the general direction of the US air and naval bases on Guam?
It’s possible, of course, the North Koreans would not respond so decisively. For North Korea, the risk of still greater counter-strikes might be too high to do much other than escalate the rhetoric as thousands massed on Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang, shouting hateful promises to “destroy” the United States – all quite harmless.
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North Koreans taken part in a mass rally in Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang on September 6 to mark their country’s sixth underground nuclear test. Photo: AP
