{"id":25281,"date":"2017-09-06T14:03:54","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T19:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25281"},"modified":"2017-09-06T14:03:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T19:03:54","slug":"on-the-brink-of-nuclear-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25281","title":{"rendered":"On the Brink of Nuclear War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the Brink of Nuclear War<\/a><\/h3>\n
Special Report:<\/strong> As nuclear war looms in Korea, the life-or-death question is whether President Trump and his team can somehow marshal the skill and strength of President Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, writes historian William R. Polk.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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In the first part<\/a> of this essay, I gave my interpretation of the background of the current confrontation in Korea. I argued that, while the past is the mother of the present, it has several fathers. What I remember is not necessarily what you remember; so, in this sense, the present also shapes or reshapes the past.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In my experience as a policy planner, I found that only by taking note of the perception of events as they are differently held by the participants could one understand or deal with present actions and ideas. I have tried to sketch out views of the past as we, the North Koreans and the South Koreans, differently view them in Part 1<\/a> of this essay.<\/p>\n

Now I want to undertake a refinement of the record I have laid out. I want first to show how our perception, the interpretation we place on the events that swirl past us, adds a new and formative element to them. Whether consciously or not, we tend to put events into a pattern. So the pattern itself becomes part of the problem we face in trying to understand events. Staking out a path \u2013 an interpretation or a theory of what random bits and pieces mean or how they will be interpreted and acted upon by others \u2014 is a complex and contentious task.<\/p>\n

Getting it wrong can lead us astray or even be very dangerous. So the interpreter, the strategist, must always be tested to see if his interpretation makes sense and the path he lays out is the one we want to travel. I will make this explicit below.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Brink of Nuclear War Special Report: As nuclear war looms in Korea, the life-or-death question is whether President Trump and his team can somehow marshal the skill and strength of President Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, writes historian William R. Polk. In the first part of this essay, I gave my interpretation […]<\/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":[6963,3558,581,6961],"class_list":["post-25281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-korea","tag-nuclear-war","tag-william-r-polk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25281","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=25281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25282,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25281\/revisions\/25282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}