{"id":96832,"date":"2017-08-14T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=96832"},"modified":"2017-08-10T12:05:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T11:05:46","slug":"the-madman-with-nuclear-weapons-is-donald-trump-not-kim-jong-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/08\/the-madman-with-nuclear-weapons-is-donald-trump-not-kim-jong-un\/","title":{"rendered":"The Madman with Nuclear Weapons Is Donald Trump, Not Kim Jong-un"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

People wave banners and shout slogans as they attend a rally in support of North Korea\u2019s stance against the U.S., on Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang on August 9, 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Aug 2017 – <\/em>For once,<\/u> Donald Trump has a point. \u201cWe can\u2019t let a madman with nuclear weapons let on the loose like that,\u201d he told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, according to the transcript from\u00a0their bizarre phone conversation that was leaked<\/a> to The Intercept in May.<\/p>\n

The madman the U.S president was referring to, of course, was North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The madman the rest of us should be worried about, however, is Trump himself, who \u2014 lest we forget \u2014 has the sole<\/a>, exclusive and unrestricted power to launch almost 1,000 nuclear warheads in a matter of minutes, should he so wish.<\/p>\n

Most nonproliferation experts<\/a> \u2014 as well as former President Jimmy Carter<\/a> and a number of former<\/a> Pentagon and State Department officials, both Republican and Democrat \u2014 agree that the brutal and murderous Kim, for all his bluster, is not irrational or suicidal, but bent on preserving his regime and preventing a U.S. attack<\/a>. Nuclear weapons are a defensive<\/a>, not an offensive, tool for the North Korean leadership \u2014 which, as Bill Clinton\u2019s defense secretary William Perry observed<\/a> on Fox News in April, may be \u201cruthless and \u2026 reckless\u201d but \u201cthey are not crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Got that? Kim is bad, not mad.<\/p>\n

The same cannot be said of The Donald. Think I\u2019m being unfair? In February, a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers wrote to the New York Times<\/a> \u201cthat the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump\u2019s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.\u201d In April, another group of mental health experts told a conference at Yale University\u2019s School of Medicine<\/a> that Trump was \u201cparanoid\u201d and \u201cdelusional\u201d and referred to the president\u2019s \u201cdangerous mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder then that so many recent<\/a> reports<\/a> suggest that South Koreans are more worried about Trump than they are about the threat posed by their hostile and paranoid neighbor?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

People watch a broadcast displaying U.S. President Donald Trump on a screen at a train station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017.
Photo: Lee Jin-man\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Consider Trump\u2019s reaction<\/a> this week to a confidential U.S. intelligence assessment \u2014 leaked to the Washington Post<\/a> \u2014 that the DPRK is now able to construct a nuclear warhead small enough to fit inside its missiles. \u201cNorth Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,\u201d the president declaimed, in response to a reporter\u2019s question at his Bedminster Golf Club on Tuesday. \u201cThey will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

How is this not an unhinged response from the so-called Leader of the Free World? In May, he said he would be \u201chonored\u201d<\/a> to meet with Kim and praised him as a \u201cpretty smart cookie.\u201d In August, he took a break from his golfing vacation to casually threaten nuclear annihilation of Kim\u2019s country (not even on the basis of any aggression by the DPRK, incidentally, but only their \u201cthreats\u201d).<\/p>\n

Does Trump understand the difference between escalating and de-escalating a nuclear crisis? Listen to Republican Senator John McCain, who has never met a \u201crogue nation\u201d he did not want to bomb, invade or occupy<\/a>. \u201cI take exception to the president\u2019s words,\u201d McCain said<\/a> on Tuesday, adding: \u201cThat kind of rhetoric, I\u2019m not sure how it helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

I mean, just how crazy do you have to be to advocate a preemptive nuclear strike that even McCain cannot get behind?<\/p>\n

Trump has form, though, when it comes to loose talk about nukes. During the presidential campaign, in August 2016, MSNBC host and ex-Republican congressman Joe Scarborough revealed<\/a> that Trump, over the course of an hour-long briefing with a senior foreign policy adviser, had asked three times about the use of nuclear weapons. At one point during the meeting, according to Scarborough, the then-GOP presidential candidate asked his adviser, \u201cIf we had them, why can\u2019t we use them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Coverage of an ICBM missile test is displayed on a screen in a public square in Pyongyang on July 29, 2017. Kim Jong-un boasted of North Korea\u2019s ability to strike any target in the U.S. after an ICBM test that weapons experts said could even bring New York into range.
Photo: Kim Won-Jin\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

To be so blas\u00e9, enthusiastic even, about the deployment of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction is a stark indicator of Trump\u2019s childishness, ignorance, belligerence, and, yes, derangement<\/a>. Here is a president who is impulsive, erratic, unstable; whose entire life and career have been defined by a complete lack of empathy. Remember his strategy for defeating ISIS? \u201cBomb the shit out of \u2019em\u201d<\/a> and \u201ctake out their families.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

So do you think civilian casualties were on his mind when he issued his \u201cfire and fury\u201d warning? Come. Off. It.<\/p>\n

Listen to McCain\u2019s fellow Republican super-hawk Senator Lindsay Graham. \u201cIf there\u2019s going to be a war to stop [Kim], it will be over there,\u201d Graham told NBC\u2019s Matt Lauer<\/a> last week, recounting a recent conversation he had with the president. \u201cIf thousands die, they\u2019re going to die over there. They\u2019re not going to die over here \u2014 and he\u2019s told me that to my face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is madness,\u201d Kingston Reif, a nuclear disarmament specialist the Arms Control Association, tweeted<\/a> in response to Graham\u2019s re-telling of Trump\u2019s remarks. \u201cUnhinged madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remember that 72 years ago today, the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, killing around 39,000 people<\/a> in Nagasaki. Three days earlier, the first A-bomb killed around 66,000 people<\/a> in Hiroshima. But a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula would make those strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like pinpricks. Experts say even a conventional war between the U.S. and the DPRK could kill more than 1 million people<\/a>; a nuclear exchange, therefore, might result in tens of millions<\/a> of casualties. Trump\u2019s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, has admitted that such a preemptive strike by the U.S.\u00a0would be a \u201chumanitarian catastrophe.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Does the president care? Graham doesn\u2019t seem to think so. Trump\u2019s former ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, who spent 18 months in his company while working on The Art of the Deal, has called the president a \u201csociopath.\u201d<\/a> In fact, one quote more than any other stood out from Schwartz\u2019s much-discussed interview with the New Yorker<\/a> in July 2016 and, perhaps, should keep us all awake at night. \u201cI genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes,\u201d said Schwartz, \u201cthere is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t say we weren\u2019t warned.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mehdi Hasan<\/a> – @mehdirhasan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most nonproliferation experts \u2014 as well as former President Jimmy Carter and a number of former Pentagon and State Department officials, both Republican and Democrat \u2014 agree that the brutal and murderous Kim, for all his bluster, is not irrational or suicidal, but bent on preserving his regime and preventing a U.S. attack. Nuclear weapons are a defensive, not an offensive, tool for the North Korean leadership \u2014 which, as Bill Clinton\u2019s defense secretary William Perry observed on Fox News in April, may be \u201cruthless and \u2026 reckless\u201d but \u201cthey are not crazy.\u201d Got that? Kim is bad, not mad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}