TRUMP’S KOREA BLURT: putting all at risk
“unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”
After hearing Mr. Trump’s golf club remarks, I woke up at 4 am unable to sleep; I took out my father’s calm and immensely human book, his classic of diplomacy about Korea and Japan (and China and Russia and the US). Sometimes Secretary Tillerson reminds me of the same calm, of how difficult and painstaking diplomacy must be. But Mr. Trump certainly doesn’t. My father’s book — The Japanese Seizure of Korea: A Study of Realism and Idealism in International Relations — is 57 years old and the period it covers over 100 years old, but the lessons are the same.
Americans! We need to remove the adolescent who currently serves as US President ASAP, through the 25th Amendment or impeachment. He has brought every man, woman and child in the US and beyond into extreme and unnecessary danger through his golf-vacation dinner remarks about “fire and fury…like the world has never seen” — threatening North Korea with a nuclear attack, on the eve of the 72nd anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. Even the Deep State, undemocratic as it is, and the Secretary of State, ecological bandit though he has been, need to be relied on in a massive coalition to depose this junior high school boy who wheedled his way into the Presidency to become a threat to this country unseen since the Civil War.
Then, with a group of more responsible nuclear powers taking the lead — countries like France, China, and England who are not so torn and racist as the US, so oligarchical and criminal as Russia, so dismissive of minorities as Israel, so unstable as Pakistan, so fanatically anti-Muslim as India, and so isolated and paranoid as North Korea — the world needs to move rapidly toward ending nukes. Non-nuclear nations that have recently been successful in overcoming horrible periods in their history — Colombia, South Africa, Germany and Japan — might join the more “responsible” three to push through this agreement rapidly.
The current situation is crazy. The people of the world do not deserve to be kept hostage like this.
North Korea, unlike ISIS and Al Qaeda, is not really so threatening, although it is a regime we don’t like. Korea has a long history of being a hermit nation. North Korea inherited this tendency big time. It developed a very isolated form of communism, based on self-reliance, meaning especially not being dependent on China or the Soviet Union. It has not threatened to expand. But it is very insecure. And it learned something called “nuclear deterrence” from the United States and others, which has worked pretty well for it.
North Korea primarily wants acceptance into the nuclear club, if there is to be a nuclear club. The ruling Kim family may have descended into strange behavior, but the regime is not totally irresponsible. This country in its own way has developed resources and attended, if minimally, to its people’s livelihood. Paranoia has often distorted its economy, which is way too militarily top-heavy — even more so than ours. Not enough has been left for the people’s livelihood, especially during bad times (famine, sanctions). There is no freedom. But North Korea is a no-brainer case for separating mutual security concerns from regime change. Regime change is not an option here.
Yes, North Korean missiles with nuclear weapons might now be able to reach the 48 states. But they could already reach Hawai’i and Alaska. They could long ago reach Tokyo, Beijing, Vladivostok, and Seoul. Recent developments are quantitative changes, not qualitative — unless you take the view that the only lives worth saving are your own, own “race,” or own heartland. Some Christianity that is!
Why do I mention the Deep State? Usually I criticize it. But now it too may be needed. I am reminded of Chile: how its military had a tradition of relative non-partisanship, and how it played a crucial role in 1988 in helping Chile to come back from the deep end. I am also reminded of Howard Zinn’s chapter, “The Revolt of the Guards”: in today’s world, the military and intelligence agencies need to be ready to shift how they “guard” against our own “deep end.” A Constitutional crisis is arising. The President is “unable to discharge…his duties” to keep the citizens safe. If fact, his adolescent behavior makes us all frighteningly vulnerable. How? Revisit the Hiroshima museum about which my friend Sasha Davis recently posted, and picture your own children and grandchildren as the people commemorated.
Don’t fool yourself. The country is not as unified or awake as it was during the Cuban missile crisis. Also its leader is much more irresponsible. We all need quickly to wake up and move into action.
