Why Trump’s North Korea Threat Matters

The American Conservative:

Ankit Panda explains why Trump’s irresponsible North Korea rhetoric was unusually worrisome:

Most importantly, however, it’s impossible to make sense of Trump’s threat without considering that second sentence, which implied that Kim—the “Rocket Man”—is on “a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” The concept of suicide, when applied to nation-states and regimes, comes with a strong implication: That they do not seek survival above all else. Extending that reasoning, a nation-state that does not seek survival but instead seeks suicide cannot be deterred with threats of total destruction. If Kim Jong Un is indeed “suicidal” in his pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles, he is presumably irrational and, as a result, cannot be deterred.

Trump’s advisors have also intimated that Kim may be similarly irrational. H.R. McMaster, his national security advisor, recently argued that his brutality meant that “classical deterrence theory” didn’t apply to him—never mind that Mao Zedong’s China and the Soviet Union were similarly repressive and characterized as rogue, unstable regimes. Nevertheless, they were deterred.

Combined with Trump’s insistence that North Korea must accept denuclearization as the only acceptable outcome, this assumption that North Korea cannot be deterred suggests that the Trump administration is contemplating an attack aimed at eliminating the regime. If Trump is already inclined to see North Korea’s leadership as suicidal, his National Security Advisor is doing nothing to dissuade him. The notable thing about McMaster’s August statement was how shoddy the reasoning behind it was. McMaster listed a number of horrible things that the regime does in its own country, and then concluded that North Korea couldn’t be deterred from launching an attack. I concluded at the time:

Cont....