Tag Archives: nuclear war

Still A Dangerous Game

An ex-Marine recently “liked” a post of mine from last September and in light of the recent appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor to the president (a choice Jimmy Carter called “Trump’s greatest mistake”), I thought it timely to post it again. Bolton, it will be recalled, has said publicly that the president should order a “pre-emtive strike” against North Korea. Now, bearing in mind that China has said that it would retaliate if this were to happen, though they would not become involved if North Korea were to strike first, this is insanity of the first order. Carter is right. Nuclear war is no joke. And it is certainly not a game.

The posturing between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un of North Korea would be mildly amusing it weren’t for the fact that both of these men seem to lack any sense of balance and both are marginally insane — and they sit on top of powder kegs playing with matches.

Their posturing ceased to be even slightly amusing when the North Korean foreign Minister recently cried “foul” and, not knowing that things don’t work this way, insisted that Trump has “declared war” on North Korea; they now have license to shoot down any American plane that ventures close enough to set off sparks. Meantime, the United States has chosen the moment to fly bombers with fighter escorts near the Korean border in a show of strength — at a time when the posturing needs to stop and clear heads need to take command — if there are any clear heads on either side of this preposterous battle of nit-wits. A recent story in Yahoo put in mildly when it was noted that:

The increasingly heated rhetoric between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is raising fears of a risk of a miscalculation by one side or the other that could have massive repercussions.

Someone really needs to break Trump’s thumbs or hide his phone so he cannot tweet the absurdities he seems determined to tweet at every possible opportunity. He really doesn’t get it. He operates inside his own head and has no sense that the things he says have consequences and the consequences in this case are of monumental proportion. Add to this the fact that a number of Congressmen on the Republican side of the aisle, led by the likes of Duncan Hunter, have decided to throw their weight, such as it is, behind the cry to bring North Korea to its knees at any cost and we have the makings of a truly serious international catastrophe. This is hubris, pure and simple. Or it is simple madness. Perhaps both. At some point someone needs to put a stop to all of this. It has already gone too far.

Before the nuclear age this sort of display of macho insolence would have been expected and even applauded by a great many of those among us who are convinced that “our side” (whichever side that happens to be) is always right in its perception of reality and morality and the only country fit to determine how everyone else in the world should live their lives. Chest thumping is not new. But this is the nuclear age and the fact that rhetoric can escalate out of control and bring about catastrophic consequences is a fact and a fact that needs to be taken to heart. “Massive repercussions,” indeed.

These two men remind me of two kids rattling their sabres to frighten one another. It is time they grew up, laid their sabres down and listened to the still, calm voice of reason. The problem, of course, is that neither of them would hear that voice even if it were shouting in his ear., They are both caught up in some sort of egomaniacal game of “chicken” and each wants to bring the other to his knees. It is incumbent on someone, anyone, to knock one or the other about the head and ears and make them realize that this game they are playing has incredibly high stakes: the lives of millions of people, not to mention the very planet itself.

Where are the clear heads when we need them? Or are there none either in Washington or in the whole of North Korea? I understand that most of the clear heads in that country have been silenced by a man who has total control of the political and military machines. In this country we are supposed to have checks and balances to maintain control of unfettered power gone mad. But those checks and balances seem to be tongue-tied and silent at a time when they need to speak up loudly and decisively.

I suspect that there are forces at work behind the scene, forces that are working to tone-down the rhetoric and make clear to both parties involved that they need to shut up and look for peaceful options to a resolution of the tensions between the two countries. But neither of these men seems inclined to listen to those who oppose him. We are not in a position to “take on” North Korea in a nuclear war since it has been made clear by the Chinese that if we start the war they will enter on the side of North Korea. And while North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear weapons may be small and unreliable, that of China nearly equals our own. These weapons are  numerous enough to end the war in a few month’s time — with the casualties piled high in countless numbers and irreparable damage to the planet. Those at work behind the scene presumably are aware of this and will win the day. We can only hope.

So far this is a war of words. I used the term “game” in the title of this piece, but it is not a game at all — or if it is, it is one that no one can possibly win. As the Yahoo News Story suggests, miscalculations are likely — especially with each of the two men in charge of things determined to make the other back down. It is time for the clear heads to speak up and the nutters to tone down the rhetoric and go sit in the corner and cool off.

 

 

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Dangerous Game

The posturing between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un of North Korea would be mildly amusing it weren’t for the fact that both of these men seem to lack any sense of balance and both are marginally insane — and they sit on top of powder kegs playing with matches.

Their posturing ceased to be even slightly amusing when the North Korean foreign Minister recently cried “foul” and, not knowing that things don’t work this way, insisted that Trump has “declared war” on North Korea; they now have license to shoot down any American plane that ventures close enough to set off sparks. Meantime, the United States has chosen the moment to fly bombers with fighter escorts near the Korean border in a show of strength — at a time when the posturing needs to stop and clear heads need to take command — if there are any clear heads on either side of this preposterous battle of nit-wits. A recent story in Yahoo put in mildly when it was noted that:

The increasingly heated rhetoric between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is raising fears of a risk of a miscalculation by one side or the other that could have massive repercussions.

Someone really needs to break Trump’s thumbs or hide his phone so he cannot tweet the absurdities he seems determined to tweet at every possible opportunity. He really doesn’t get it. He operates inside his own head and has no sense that the things he says have consequences and the consequences in this case are of monumental proportion. Add to this the fact that a number of Congressmen on the Republican side of the aisle, led by the likes of Duncan Hunter, have decided to throw their weight, such as it is, behind the cry to bring North Korea to its knees at any cost and we have the makings of a truly serious international catastrophe. This is hubris, pure and simple. Or it is simple madness. Perhaps both. At some point someone needs to put a stop to all of this. It has already gone too far.

Before the nuclear age this sort of display of macho insolence would have been expected and even applauded by a great many of those among us who are convinced that “our side” (whichever side that happens to be) is always right in its perception of reality and morality and the only country fit to determine how everyone else in the world should live their lives. Chest thumping is not new. But this is the nuclear age and the fact that rhetoric can escalate out of control and bring about catastrophic consequences is a fact and a fact that needs to be taken to heart. “Massive repercussions,” indeed.

These two men remind me of two kids rattling their sabres to frighten one another. It is time they grew up, lay their sabres down and listened to the still, calm voice of reason. The problem, of course, is that neither of them would hear that voice even if it were shouting in his ear., They are both caught up in some sort of egomaniacal game of “chicken” and each wants to bring the other to his knees. It is incumbent on someone, anyone, to knock one or the other about the head and ears and make them realize that this game they are playing has incredibly high stakes: the lives of millions of people are at stake, as is the very planet itself.

Where are the clear heads when we need them? Or are there none either in Washington or in the whole of North Korea? I understand that most of the clear heads in that country have been silenced by a man who has total control of the political and military machines. In this country we are supposed to have checks and balances to maintain control of unfettered power gone mad. But those checks and balances seem to be tongue-tied and silent at a time when they need to speak up loudly and decisively.

I suspect that there are forces at work behind the scene, forces that are working to tone-down the rhetoric and make clear to both parties involved that they need to shut up and look for peaceful options to a resolution of the tensions between the two countries. But neither of these men seems inclined to listen to those who oppose him. We are not in a position to “take on” North Korea in a nuclear war since it has been made clear by the Chinese that if we start the war they will enter on the side of North Korea. And while North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear weapons may be small and unreliable, that of China nearly equals our own. These weapons are  numerous enough to end the war in a few month’s time — with the casualties piled high in countless numbers and irreparable damage to the planet. Those at work behind the scene presumably are aware of this and will win the day. We can only hope.

So far this is a war of words. I used the term “game” in the title of this piece, but it is not a game at all — or if it is, it is one that no one can possibly win. As the Yahoo News Story suggests, miscalculations are likely — especially with each of the two men in charge of things determined to make the other back down. It is time for the clear heads to speak up and the nutters to tone down the rhetoric and go sit in the corner and cool off.

 

 

Hitherto Unknown

I am reading Gertrude Himmelfarb’s latest book The Moral Imagination, which is a collection of essays about famous people and their take on life. One of the entries is about John Buchan, whom I must confess I had never heard about. He died in 1940 and Himmelfarb describes him as having been a “novelist, biographer, historian, member of Parliament, governor-general of Canada, . . . one of the last articulate representatives of the Old England. . . .the paradigm (the parody some would have it) of a species of English gentlemen now nearly extinct.”

Buchan is also a bit of a cynic and I find myself drawn to many of his witticisms and observations about the people he sees around him — mostly found in his novels apparently. As I say, I had never heard of this man, which is a bit embarrassing since he is quite remarkable. In any event, he has this to say about civilization, a civilization which he regards as “a very thin crust” over the barbarism that lurks always just beneath the surface:

“A civilization bemused by an opulent materialism has been met by a rude challenge. The free people have been challenged by the serfs. The gutters have exuded a poison which bids fair to ingest the world. The beggar-on-horseback rides roughshod over the helpless and the cavalier. A combination of multitudes who have lost their nerve and a junta of arrogant demagogues has shattered the community of nations. . . .There is in it all, too, an ugly pathological savor, as if a mature society were being assailed by diseased and vicious children.”

Remarkable prose. And telling insights. If we were to alter the word “serfs” in the second sentence above and replace it with “mindless minions” Buchan could be describing what has just happened in this country, now under the thumb of a “beggar-on-horseback” if there ever was one.  But Buchan’s gaze extends beyond the  borders of any particular nation to the world as such. And it would appear that he saw  what has come about in this country and other “developed”  (and undeveloped) nations as well: mature societies “being assailed by diseased and vicious children.”

What concerned Buchan primarily was the boiling cauldron beneath the surface of civilization in the form of a black heart, the dark subconscious mind, within so many of the humans he saw around him — even before Hitler and Stalin had taken center stage. As Himmelfarb notes in this regard:

“Once the subconscious, lawless instincts of men were liberated and broke through the barrier erected by civilization, ‘there will be a weakening of the power or reasoning, which after all is the thing that brings men nearest to the Almighty; and there will be a failure of nerve.’ It was not the reason of state, even of a hostile state, that alarmed him but the force of unreason itself.”

At times we come across a mind that, while perhaps a bit cynical, sees clearly what the rest of us fail to admit is there, or never saw in the first place. But given the events of recent times where the force of unreason has most assuredly been released and at least two of the major players on the world stage strut their stuff and play “chicken” with nuclear weapons (neither of these men having a brain the size of a chicken’s), one must shudder to think that Buchan may have been prescient. The gutters have indeed “exuded a poison which bids fair to ingest the world.”

We live in hard times and many of us prefer to think about more pleasant things. But despite our determination to look the other way, when we hear the ring of truth it stuns and demands our attention.