As I, and numerous other commentators, have noted previously, blustering about the North Korean nuclear program creates the potential for uncertainty about motives and, therefore, could result in an unwanted war in and of itself. If you assume, however, for purposes of argument that we won’t just stumble into war over rhetoric, how do you tell the difference between bluster and reality?
The salient facts are as follows:
- The Trump Administration doesn’t really want war. If it did, the war would already have started.
- Nothing short of war is going to stop the North Korean program. Period.
- The program is moving steadily to the point where it threatens mass destruction on the US mainland. The time to act is running out.
And so, in the final analysis, North Korea has already made its choice to create a nuclear program that threatens the US, and the Trump Administration will ultimately have to choose between war and deterrence to keep it at bay. Based on what we’ve seen so far, it appears that deterrence is going to win, but that isn’t set in stone.
Everything else–all the tests and all of the verbal threats–is just noise.