north-korea

Slouching Toward War With North Korea

John Brennan, the former head of the C.I.A., estimates the chance of a war with North Korea at 20 to 25 percent.

Joel S. Wit, a Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University, puts it at 40 percent.

Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the odds may be somewhere around 50/50.

.. Almost no expert believes that sanctions will force Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear weapons or halt his missile program. That puts us on a collision course, for North Korea seems determined to develop a clear capacity to target the U.S. with nuclear weapons

.. the White House hints that it would rather have a war than allow the North to become a nuclear threat

.. Tammy Duckworth, a former military pilot who is now a Democratic senator from Illinois, says that from what she hears, the chance is greater than 50/50 that the president will order a strike.

.. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, has said that Trump told him he’d choose a war with North Korea over allowing it to continue on its course.

.. “There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself,” Graham told the “Today” show, relaying a conversation with Trump. “If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here — and he’s told me that to my face.”

Graham said that if North Korea continues to test intercontinental ballistic missiles, a war is “inevitable.”

.. Eerily, on my last visit, North Koreans repeatedly said that a nuclear war with the U.S. was not only survivable but winnable.

The U.S. must now choose among three awful options:

A “freeze for a freeze” deal, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to be pursuing;

Long-term deterrence, just as we have deterred North Korea for decades from using its chemical and biological weapons;

A conventional war that might escalate into a nuclear exchange.

.. North Korea may also inflame the situation with provocations at any time, such as firing a long-range missile into the sea near Guam, or conducting an atmospheric nuclear test that would send radioactive fallout drifting toward the United States.

Will Manafort Sing?

If Manafort pursues his self-interest, my bet is that he’ll sing. That then can become a cascade: He testifies against others, who in turn are pressured to testify against still others. And all this makes it more difficult to protect the man at the center if indeed he has violated the law.

.. The Papadopoulos revelation is particularly interesting because it goes precisely to the issue of collusion, and it’s not just an allegation—it’s a guilty plea.

.. So if Trump pardoned Manafort, my bet is that he would be prosecuted for state crimes; from Manafort’s point of view, the essential difference is that he would end up in a state prison rather than a federal prison. And the same is true of others in Trump’s circle.

Another point worth pondering is how it is that President Trump chose as his campaign chair someone like Manafort whose reputation in the political world was less about his political brilliance than about his ties to Russia and Ukraine (including some of the most corrupt people there) and his general shadiness. It’s said that Jared Kushner was among those advocating to hire Manafort, so the obvious question is: Why?

Maybe there simply wasn’t adequate vetting, even though news organizations quickly found problems that led to Manafort’s firing. But the inclination to hire someone so close to Moscow does raise questions about the Trump inner circle’s predilection to hire someone linked to Russia and Ukraine.

.. Look, it was The Times that in 2015 helped uncover and publicize the uranium arrangement, but it has been flagrantly taken out of context by Fox News and its ilk.

.. this was a non-controversial deal that an interagency committee approved, apparently unanimously, at a level far below Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Every bit of evidence says that Clinton never even weighed in on it. So the notion that this is somehow a serious scandal parallel to Moscow’s work to overturn an American presidential election is just comical.

.. One peril ahead is that President Trump may engage in riskier or more aggressive behavior vis-à-vis North Korea so that people will rally around the flag.

.. Any firing of Mueller would lead many fair-minded people to assume that Trump is hiding criminal behavior, perhaps treason. There would be a push for impeachment, a boost to Congressional investigations, and the presidency would be hobbled—along with the United States itself—for years to come.

Tillerson Balances Trump’s Goals With His Own

In interview, secretary of state reflects on his role in administration, warns China on trade and territory

“Most of the things he would do would be done on very short time frames. Everything I spent my life doing was done on 10- to 20-year time frames, so I am quite comfortable thinking in those terms.”

His solution: “Delivering the incremental wins,” he said. “Incremental progress is taking you toward the ultimate objective, which is, as I say is eight, 10 years down the road.”’

.. Mr. Tillerson said one of his top long-term priorities is shifting the balance of the trade and national-security relationship with China

.. Mr. Tillerson warned China that the U.S. has an arsenal of economic weapons to force Beijing to address trade imbalances and a continuing territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

.. “We can do this one of two ways,” Mr. Tillerson said during the interview, seeming at times to speak directly to his Chinese counterparts. “We can do it cooperatively and collaboratively, or we can do it by taking actions and letting you react to that.”
Tools he might apply include tariffs, World Trade Organization actions, quotas and other mechanisms, he said.

.. “If I were a world leader—doesn’t matter who—I wouldn’t talk to Tillerson,” said Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, citing the public divide between the two men. “The president must feel that this person can do the work for him…this is not the case here. It’s becoming antagonistic.”

.. Mr. Trump has also disparaged his top diplomat, complaining that Mr. Tillerson doesn’t understand his “Make America Great” philosophy and has few original thoughts. “Totally establishment in his thinking,” he has told aides.

.. “I believe you solve a problem in Afghanistan not by just dealing with Afghanistan,” he said. “You solve it by solving a regional problem, and that’s the way we’re looking at the Middle East.”

.. said he spends the bulk of his time concentrating on North Korea, Iran, counterterrorism, China and Russia.

Ex-CIA Chief Sees at Least ‘One in Five’ Chance of War with North Korea

In Fordham Law School interview, John Brennan also says Trump is either uninformed or misleading public about Iran deal

Former CIA Director John Brennan estimated that the U.S. has at least a 20% likelihood of becoming engaged in military conflict with North Korea amid President Donald Trump’s discord with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

.. “Having this back-and-forth on the public stage is not the way to de-escalate here,” Mr. Brennan said during an onstage interview at Fordham University School of Law on Wednesday night.

Mr. Brennan said only back-channel negotiations would “allow these two individuals to save face.”

Otherwise, “I can’t see either one of them saying, ‘OK, uncle! You win.’”

.. On Wednesday, Mr. Brennan said that although Russian operatives are “very sophisticated observers of the American political scene,” he nevertheless believed they were assisted by at least some individuals within the U.S. in their campaign to meddle in the election.

“It’s hard for me to believe that the Russians—as good as they are, as sophisticated as they are—were not able to get some Americans to cooperate with them, either wittingly or unwittingly,” he said. “I find it implausible.”