As for this author, please refer to my previous postings（http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=Douglas+Murray+）. (Lily)The Sun（https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4206457/）
North Korea is testing Trump’s trigger finger – but so long as the US president keeps his cool, this six-decade standoff need not end in a mushroom cloud
Douglas Murray provides an insight into relations between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.
by Douglas Murray
9th August 2017, 2:26 pm
AGAINST some stiff competition North Korea is probably the unhappiest country in the world. And, against equally stiff competition, its leadership may be among the most unpredictable. With a question-mark hanging over whether or not it is also the maddest.
The latest rhetoric from North Korea (or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as it likes to be known) is not new. Claims from that country that it is about to ‘crush’ and ‘obliterate’ the ‘Yankees’ have been commonplace since the end of the Korean war in 1953.
Everyone who has visited the country – as I have – comes away with the same overriding impression, which is that the country is stuck in a time-trap. Its beliefs remain the same. Its population remains as immiserated as ever. And its rhetoric remains unchanged.
Indeed blood-curdling cries against America, South Korea, Japan and other "enemy" countries are so routine from North Korea’s government and media that they have become to North Koreans what weather-reports are for the rest of us.
But what is striking about the latest ramp-up of tensions and rhetoric is that it is not one-sided.
It comes as a response to the latest United Nations sanctions against North Korea. Those sanctions are intended to put further pressure on the regime to stop its development and testing of nuclear weapons and deliverable missile technology.
Such technology – if it is developed – would put an intolerable burden on North Korea’s neighbours. It could also mean that North Korea has the capability to hit the West Coast of the United States with a nuclear warhead.
Washington rightly sees this as a red line. And so it has pushed the UN on tighter sanctions.
For its part the North Korean regime recently announced revenge "a thousand fold" for the sanctions. And it is then that the unusual thing happened. For the response of this US President has not been to lower tensions, but to return rhetorical fire.
In response to Pyongyang’s threat President Trump promised "fire and fury like the world has never seen" if North Korea does not stop threatening the United States.
Now North Korea is said to be considering striking at the US Pacific military base of Guam. This is where fine judgement calls are needed.
It is possible that the regime in North Korea thinks it worth striking at Guam. Whether it has the capability to do so is debatable.
What is undeniable is that if North Korea attacked the US military or US interests anywhere in the world Washington (under any President) would retaliate. Pyongyang ought to have no delusions about this.
If America did retaliate it would have a set of options open to it. It could strike key military and related installations in North Korea. What both sides know is that they could topple the regime in the process. And in fact this is a disincentive for both sides.
The most likely explanation of the North Korean regime is that it is riding a tiger. It knows – and has known for decades – that if anything changes they get eaten. And while the regime may be deranged it is not clear that it is suicidal.
And then there is the question for the US. Were the country to strike the North it is highly likely that it would lead to a set of events which would lead to a war on the Peninsula which would end with America having to help reunite South and North Korea.
This would be an operation that would make Iraq look like a cakewalk. If there is one thing America does not want to do more of – and President Trump in particular – it is nation building abroad.
Washington knows that. And Pyongyang almost certainly knows that Washington knows that. That knowledge has helped sustain a stand-off for six decades so far. And – barring any sudden moves by Washington – it is likely to sustain this uneasy stand-off for many years to come.
・Douglas Murray is a British journalist, political commentator and associate director of the Henry Jackson Society. He is also the author of 'The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam'.（End）
