George Will wrote a column over the weekend suggesting that President Trump may be heading recklessly toward nuclear war with North Korea. The overall tone of the article questions Trump’s fitness to lead. He suggests that the President’s Twitter feed is partly to blame for Kim Jong Un’s mad dash to demonstrate ICBM’s with nuclear capability. “North Korea’s nuclear bellicosity coincides with the incontinent tweeting, rhetorical taunts, and other evidence of the frivolity and instability of the 13th president of the nuclear era.”
The lesson Kim Jong Un learned from Qaddafi’s death was to die rather than give up nuclear weapons
Will misses the point in two ways, however. First, throughout the article he assumes a nuclear first strike by the United States. He devotes much of his argument to an analysis of Congressional war powers versus presidential powers as Commander in Chief.
Will then takes that a step further, and suggests that Trump himself is likely to order a nuclear attack. The sub-heading of the article asks whether the President can distinguish between a preventive war and a war of aggression. His dark close citing the Nuremberg trials is an unmistakable implication that Will believes the answer is, ‘No, President Trump cannot, and therefore cannot be trusted.’
Blinded By Disdain for Trump
I have always had tremendous respect for George Will. His usual analytical abilities have failed him this time, however, because of his negative underlying assumptions about President Trump. He is laying the blame for Kim Jong Un’s aggression at the feet of Trump, rather than on the North Korean system and Kim where it belongs.
Like Yertle the Turtle, Kim has been king of all he can see and he now wants to ‘rule’ over more
Kim Jong Un has grown up knowing that in the North Korean system, his word is law. Like Yertle the Turtle in the Dr. Seuss children’s book, he has been king of all he can see and he now wants to ‘rule’ over more and more territory. He has reached the dangerous point where his ambitions cannot be contained within the ‘pond’ of North Korean territory any more, but are threatening the rest of the world.
Will’s second error is more difficult to understand, because he gives a nod to the underlying problem and then fails to develop it. If an American president is to be blamed for Kim Jong Un’s “nuclear bellicosity” and absolute refusal to give up nuclear weapons, that president is Barack Obama. It was Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who were so proud of having killed Moammar Qaddafi.
Will mentions the problem, but can’t stop criticizing Trump’s temperament. “… [T]here is no reason to think that North Korea’s regime will relinquish weapons it deems essential to its single priority: survival. As Vladimir Putin says, North Korea would rather ‘eat grass.’ U.S. actions have taught this regime the utility, indeed the indispensability, of such weapons. Would America have invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq if he had possessed them? Would America have participated in destroying Libya’s regime in 2011 if, soon after Saddam’s overthrow, Moammar Qaddafi had not agreed to abandon his nuclear-weapons program?”
The Kim Jong Un Qaddafi Lesson
Kim Jong Un’s absolute determination to acquire the ability to launch a nuclear strike against the United States is attributable as much to the death of Qaddafi as any other event in recent history. Shortly after the U.S. swept Saddam from power because Saddam claimed to have WMD, Qaddafi contacted American authorities and surrendered his nuclear weapons. He didn’t want to be next.
2009.
Going much further, Qaddafi also cooperated with American intelligence. Most importantly, he exposed the A. Q. Khan network that supplied nuclear technology to so many other nations, including North Korea. But cooperating didn’t protect him.
When our government made his death a public priority, Qaddafi had given up his nuclear weapons and was helping us.
Hillary Clinton notoriously clapped and laughed while celebrating his overthrow and death: “We came, we saw, he died.” (Watch the chilling 11-second video clip here. I guarantee that Kim Jong Un has watched it.)
More chilling, Clinton not only celebrated Qaddafi’s death, she had called for it just days earlier. A regional analyst commented at the time, “U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly called for the political assassination of Moammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. ‘We hope he can be captured or killed soon,’ she said — while in Libya, to Libyans.”
And this is the point that George Will just glossed over. When our government made his death a public priority, Qaddafi had given up his nuclear weapons and was helping us roll back nuclear proliferation. He was not killed because he claimed to have WMD, as was the case with Saddam. He was killed after he gave them up.
The lesson Kim Jong Un learned from Qaddafi’s death was to die rather than give up nuclear weapons, and to double down on developing them. Before the media point to President Trump’s tweets as harmful to international diplomacy, they need to look at the diplomacy of Obama and Clinton. This is the world that Trump inherited, the history that influences Kim Jong Un.
