On North Korea
President Trump threatened North Korea with “Fire and Fury” in a statement that sounded like something Kim Jong Un would issue

Let’s be clear — North Korea does not want war with the United States and the United States has little to actually fear from a war with North Korea. The American media has spent a great deal of time reporting on the ability of the North Korean regime to launch, perhaps, a missile at the United States as if this changes the balance of power on the Korean peninsula.
It does not.
Today, as has been true for decades, North Korea can not hope to win a war against the United States. Today, as has been true for decades, the United States is unable to resolve the North Korean situation by force of arms because the human cost to our allies would be too high. The only difference is that, today, the cost the United States itself is becoming too high.
Americans will not stand for the loss of Portland or Anchorage or Los Angeles as the price paid to silence North Korea’s decades old bluster and this gives the North a measure of security. It cements, rather than destabilizes, the status quo.
Americans would do well to remember that North Korea might, on its best day, be able to destroy an American city and lay waste to Seoul. In return, it would be scoured from the face of the earth. The North is not suicidal; the actions it has taken in the last 40 years have been pragmatic ones intended to secure the position of its government both domestically and internationally.
An attack on the United States does not serve that purpose.
If North Korea wishes to be left alone then, what must it do to ensure that? It must deter American intervention. This means it must have the capability to attack the United States, communicate that it will do so if attacked, and be credible in its claims. Why develop a nuclear capable missile system? Because the North needs capability. Why threaten and bluster? Because the North must communicate that it will not tolerate attack. Why project a war-like, unhinged persona? Because the threat must be credible and only a madman would take on the United States in a nuclear exchange.
But while the North must rattle its saber and scream its outrage into the night, the United States requires no such demonstrations. Its capability and the long-standing history of American nuclear policy speaks for itself. By echoing Kim Jong Un’s rhetoric, Trump will not cow the North Korean despot but agitate him. Un can not back down from the United States; too much rides on the politics of American opposition for him.
If there is to be peace in Korea — and ironically a Nuclear North may serve to contribute to that — it must begin with the United States playing the role of superpower rather than schoolyard bully.
But for this administration, that may be a tall order.
