The New York Times published last Saturday an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof saying that President Donald J. Trump’s belligerent approach to North Korea could end in a nuclear war. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Kristof wrote, said that Trump told him he’d choose a war with North Korea over allowing it to continue on its course. “There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself,” Graham said, relaying a conversation with Trump. “If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here—and he’s told me that to my face.”
Is Trump seriously putting the United States on a slippery slope to war? Kristof sought the opinion of three experts: John Brennan, former head of the CIA, estimated the chance of a war with North Korea at 20 percent to 25 percent. Joel S. Wit, a Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University, gave it a 40-percent chance. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the odds may be somewhere around 50-50.
Kristof wrote: “The Congressional Research Service last month estimated that as many as 300,000 people could die in the first few days of war—and that’s if it remains nonnuclear. If there is a nuclear exchange, “there easily could be a million deaths on the first day,” said Scott Sagan, an international security expert at Stanford, who believes the odds of war are certainly greater than is widely recognized by the American public.”
Trump is currently in Asia, rallying countries to strengthen sanctions against North Korea. However, Kristof said the goal appears doomed: “Almost no expert believes that sanctions will force Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons or halt his missile program. That puts us on a collision course, for North Korea seems determined to develop a clear capacity to target the US with nuclear weapons, while the White House hints that it would rather have a war than allow the North to become a nuclear threat.”
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, said on Fox News he is not going to permit Kim Jong Un to threaten the US with a nuclear weapon, and he is willing to do anything necessary to prevent that from happening. Kristof said the whispers in Washington are that “anything necessary” includes air strikes on North Korea, such as a strike on a missile as it is being prepared for launch. In short: war.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a former military pilot and an Iraq war veteran, told Kristof that, from what she hears, the chance is greater than 50-50 that Trump will order a strike on North Korea. Kristof quoted Duckworth: “I am extremely worried that we’ve moved beyond ‘let’s prevent war’ to ‘it’s acceptable to do a first strike.’”
Kristof said: “Trump didn’t create the problem, and it’s real: We should fear North Korea’s gaining the capacity to destroy US cities. Eerily, on my last visit, North Koreans repeatedly said that a nuclear war with the US was not only survivable but winnable.”
The reckless threats emanating from the United States and North Korea are quite alarming. What’s surprising is that neither the public nor the global financial markets recognize how high the risk is of a nuclear war, and how devastating this could be.