it. but the president has changed his tone on china in a very interesting way since his meeting with the chinese president of course flipping on his former claim they are currency manipulators and now deciding they are not and doesn t want to use that terminology. it s fluid in terms of what we hear from president trump, and i expect that we might see that continue moving forward. the discussion of geopolitical rhetorical shift here, i want you to listen to what the president said during the campaign about diplomacy versus military action and his preferences here. unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct. you can not have a foreign policy without diplomacy. a super power understands that caution and restrained are really, truly signs of strength. caution and restraint.
okay. graham, i know as i said you have written extensively about the relationship between u.s. and china and written a book in which you say that the two countries could be heading toward war. why do you write that and do you think it s inevitable? well, not inevitable but a fast track the war is just the scenario that we ve been discussing. donald trump says north korea cannot acquire a capability to attack the american homeland with nuclear weapons. if the only way to prevent that is an attack on north korea, like the attack on syria, he says he s going to conduct that attack. north korea kim jong-un says if that happens, he s going to attack and destroy seoul. if that were to happen, we re into a second korean war in which americans will be fighting chinese. no chinese and no americans want to fight each other. that s a very fast track from the path that we re on and this
forward and push the envelope will create an escalation that could be very dangerous and tip over into a hot war involving nuclear weapons which nobody win which is that occurs. general marks, do you believe that this can be deescalated and how? let me address what the congressman just said. it almost doesn t matter what the united states or anyone else does relative to north korean behavior. inarguably, everything that the alliance, the south korean and u.s. alliance and our friends in the region have done over the course of the last 70 years has not altered any behavior in pyongyang. that s point number one. the fact that we have a carrier battleground in the sea of japan is normal behavior. that s point number two. i would suggest that beijing is more concerned about that because they could see where something could tip out of control. but we focus more as the congressman said, he described it as sabre rattling.
its allies, will. usa. you have written extensively about this topic. do you read that and hear a threat to china as much as one to north korea? absolutely. so president trump has said north korea will not acquire a capability to strike the american mainland with nuclear weapons, and if china fails to deal with north korea, he will by striking north korea. china knows that could lead to a war between china and the u.s., so he s trying to make credible something that seems incredible and seems almost hard to believe. he s stated unambiguous red line and therefore this tension will continue building. david, i want to read to you what a north korean official released. strong statement here a little while ago. it said in part if the u.s. does
war. it s about if we attack them first. so our talk of a preemptive strike is one where they say if we attack them first, they ll come back. the thing is, we all tend to believe they ll go down swinging, which is why we don t attack. do we know what an attack would look like in kim jong-un s eyes? we know what they have logistically in terms of their weaponry. we just don t know what s going on inside his head. yeah. the question is if we were to actually try to do some kind of a missile targeted strike against north korea, would they respond? so having ships in that area as the u.s. does now wouldn t constitute a provocation? we do that all the time. we do? on a yearly basis. we do. he doesn t like it. yes. that s our show of strength. their show of strength is the parades they just had and missile tests that they do.