{"id":24799,"date":"2017-08-22T08:07:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24799"},"modified":"2017-08-22T08:07:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T13:07:00","slug":"the-new-trump-war-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24799","title":{"rendered":"The New Trump: War President\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/08\/22\/the-new-trump-war-president\/#comment-282530\">The New Trump: War President<span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 16px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> President Trump\u2019s reversal on the Afghan War \u2013 now promising to \u201cwin\u201d not withdraw \u2013 further makes him a \u201cwar president\u201d along with his \u201cfire and fury\u201d belligerence over North Korea, as Jonathan Marshall observes.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Say what you will about Charlottesville, the national debate over neo-Nazis at least took our minds off the threat of nuclear war with North Korea. With the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/world\/articles\/2017-08-21\/us-south-korea-begin-computer-simulated-drills-amid-north-korea-tensions\">start of U.S.-South Korean war games<\/a>, that specter will quickly return to haunt us.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24362\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Screen-Shot-2017-08-22-at-6.09.12-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-24362\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Screen-Shot-2017-08-22-at-6.09.12-AM-300x241.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Screen-Shot-2017-08-22-at-6.09.12-AM-300x241.png 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Screen-Shot-2017-08-22-at-6.09.12-AM-160x128.png 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Screen-Shot-2017-08-22-at-6.09.12-AM.png 405w\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"241\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Donald Trump describing his policy toward the Afghan War, at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, on Aug. 21, 2017. (Screenshot from Whitehouse.gov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>How worried should we be? The answer lies much more in Washington than in Pyongyang. The Kim regime has been almost entirely consistent in its policy: It means to keep building a credible nuclear arsenal, complete with ICBMs, until it has the capacity to deter a U.S. attack. For all its posturing and bombast, North Korea\u2019s policy is fundamentally defensive.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, the Trump administration has sent a host of confusing messages. Some top officials buy into sane, defensive notions of mutual nuclear deterrence. Others, however, insist that Kim\u2019s regime must be vanquished before it acquires greater nuclear capabilities. The fate of millions of people rests on which policy President Trump adopts.<\/p>\n<p>One of Steve Bannon\u2019s last <a href=\"http:\/\/prospect.org\/article\/steve-bannon-unrepentant\">declarations<\/a> before being fired by the White House was that no \u201cmilitary option\u201d exists for dealing with North Korea, because of the extraordinary damage a war would cause.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/08\/10\/hurtling-toward-fire-and-fury\/\">As I\u2019ve discussed before<\/a>, however, another influential Washington figure, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has lobbied Trump to order an all-out attack if Pyongyang continues testing missiles capable of reaching the United States \u2014 even if a war turns South Korea and Japan into wastelands.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Trump: War President\u00a0 Exclusive: President Trump\u2019s reversal on the Afghan War \u2013 now promising to \u201cwin\u201d not withdraw \u2013 further makes him a \u201cwar president\u201d along with his \u201cfire and fury\u201d belligerence over North Korea, as Jonathan Marshall observes. Say what you will about Charlottesville, the national debate over neo-Nazis at least took [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2487,6963,7844,7430,3558,2006,862,15598],"class_list":["post-24799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-afghanistan","tag-consortium-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-jonathan-marshall","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-war","tag-war-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24800,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24799\/revisions\/24800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}