http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...87ae4b0449ed506602b?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Trump’s Warning To North Korea Called ‘Exactly Wrong’ And ‘Reckless’
“That is about the stupidest and most dangerous statement I have ever heard an American president make.”
By Matt Ferner
President
Donald Trump issued a stark warning to North Korea on Tuesday promising to unleash “fire, fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before” if the country continues to escalate its threats against the U.S.
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump said Tuesday in a short statement to reporters before a meeting on the national opioid crisis. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] has been very threatening beyond a normal state.”
Trump’s remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, only add tension to an already dangerous standoff with North Korea, several experts who spoke to HuffPost warned. Over the years, the U.S. has attempted to prevent the growth of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and development of missile technology at various times using sanctions, diplomacy and the threat of military action. But nothing has fully obstructed the nation’s advancements.
“That is about the stupidest and most dangerous statement I have ever heard an American president make,” John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said to HuffPost. The Bulletin created the “Doomsday Clock,” a symbolic representation of humanity’s proximity to apocalyptic destruction.
Trump’s remarks followed reports Tuesday from
NBC News and
The Washington Post that North Korea has developed a nuclear warhead small enough to fit inside one of its long-range missiles.
The successful miniaturization of a nuclear weapon would mark a major advancement for North Korea’s nuclear program. While U.S. intelligence officials do not know whether North Korea has tested the miniaturized warhead yet, the reports come on the heels of two recent successful test-launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the U.S.
Trump’s remarks closely followed fierce rhetoric from Pyongyang in response to new international sanctions against the isolated communist nation. “Should the U.S. pounce upon the DPRK with military force at last, the DPRK is ready to teach the U.S. a severe lesson with its strategic nuclear force,” Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho
said in a statement, using the acronym for the official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
While North Korea’s strong language came as no surprise ― Kim has put out countless declarations of war against the U.S. throughout the years ― Mecklin argues that Trump’s response of heightened rhetoric is “exactly backwards.”
“It’s exactly wrong. It increases the likelihood of nuclear war. And those kind of threats are just not something an American president should make,” Mecklin said.
In January, Mecklin’s group moved the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand
30 seconds closer to midnight ― the hour symbolizing global catastrophe. The minute hand is now at 2½ minutes to midnight, closer than it has been since 1953,
when it hit 2 minutes following the testing of hydrogen bombs by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Trump’s comments on nuclear arms and climate issues were among the factors the group took into consideration in advancing the clock this year.
MIT linguistics professor emeritus and renowned foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky agreed with Mecklin’s assessment. “Trump’s statement is extremely dangerous,” Chomsky said. According to the professor, the only reasonable approach the U.S. should take with North Korea is to “pursue the negotiating option put forth by China and North Korea, based on North Korea’s freezing its nuclear and weapons programs and the U.S. ending threatening military maneuvers on North Korea’s borders,” and then seek to move forward from there.
