Report
- +2
George Perkovich, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Joseph Cirincione, …
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"Jon Wolfsthal"
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Source: Getty
Other
Why Kim Jong Un Isn’t Afraid of Donald Trump
Kim Jong Un is likely to view President Trump much like his predecessors—as a president who doesn’t like North Korea’s nuclear capabilities but with few realistic options for stopping it.
Published on Aug 30, 2017
Source: Politico
Most Americans think North Korea is a crazy place, led by a crazy man bent on global destruction. This view, of course, is almost completely wrong and explains in part why the current public discussion about what to do with a nuclear North Korea is so unsatisfying. Far from crazy, Kim Jong Un has been methodical and careful enough in advancing his nuclear and missile programs to suggest that he is deterred by America’s overwhelming military capabilities, and at the very least is not eager to spark a military conflict—at least not yet.
But what does Kim think of us? If we are going to continue to rely, as we have for decades, on deterrence to prevent a major conflict on the Korean Peninsula, it helps to know both a little about who we are trying to deter and what our deterrence partner thinks about America. As a senior director in the Obama White House charged with coordinating nonproliferation policy, I thought about this question a lot as we tried to ensure our actions and words intended to influence North Korea would send the right deterrent and diplomatic messages to Pyongyang.
This article was originally published in Politico
Read the article
About the Author
Jon Wolfsthal
Former Nonresident Scholar, Nuclear Policy Program
Jon Wolfsthal was a nonresident scholar with the Nuclear Policy Program.
- Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security<br>With 2007 Report Card on Progress
- 10 Plus 10 Doesn’t Add UpArticle
Jon Wolfsthal
Recent Work
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
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