The relevant departments here, in this case the defense department, talking about a president itching for war, closing the door to diplomacy, those are not normally folks who panic at a presidential tweet. the fact is here is the president making an official statement via twitter, in effect a nuclear threat here. how consequential do you think this is? it s a consequential but not in the way that some people are afraid of. it s not actually escalating toward nuclear war. i would pay more attention to what foreign leaders are taking from this, and they see a president who is reacting incidentally to a threat of nuclear war that was started by north korea. it was north korea threatening south korea, our treaty ally where we have 25,000 troops and tens of thousands of american citizens and reacting to that. and approaching this dimple than the last several administrations who followed all the rules, performed all the diplomatic niceties and gotten nothing.
In this case the defense department, talking about a president itching for war, closing the door to diplomacy, those are not normally folks who panic at a presidential tweet. the fact is here is the president making an official statement via twitter, in effect a nuclear threat here. how consequential do you think this is? it s a consequential but not in the way that some people are afraid of. it s not actually escalating toward nuclear war. i would pay more attention to what foreign leaders are taking from this, and they see a president who is reacting incidentally to a threat of nuclear war that was started by north korea. it was north korea threatening south korea, our treaty ally where we have 25,000 troops and tens of thousands of american citizens and reacting to that. and approaching this dimple than the last several administrations who followed all the rules, performed all the diplomatic niceties and gotten nothing.
Washington. thank you for being here. let s start on north korea and get into what s happening in iron. what do you make of admiral mullen s assessment? well, i think he can see that there isn t a strong diplomatic front, there isn t a strong outreach to get north korea to the table. also, you can see in kim jong-un s speech that he detects that the south korean people are fearful, they re on the firing line. yes, the u.s. might face a nuclear strike by north korea, but we also have counter measures that could likely knock such a missile out of the sky. south korea is under the firing line of all of that artillery from the north and it s been estimated that in the first 48 hours of any conflict, that tens of thousands of south koreans would die. so he is opening a front by offering them the olive branch, saying there is another way out of this, a sort of divide and
His public persona on this subject and it s quite adamant and quite wordy, but we know from people we have talked to behind the scenes that president trump is seriously very, very concerned about this, because this has always been the calculation for the u.s. military and intelligence community. how do you let if you let it get to the point where north korea actually has all of those pieces and parts, the missile, the warhead, the re-entry, the nuclear materiel, the targeting, the guidance. what do you do about it? you know? we ve talked a lot, could you launch a pre-emptive strike? launch a small strike? north korea has vowed it would turn south korea into a sea of fire. it would retaliate immediately. tens of thousands of south koreans would be killed. the notion of how you deal with north korea militarily has been something that military planners know the options are out there, but they know they are very
Have over an act that most effects south korea. that s always been the dichotomy here, is that we re the ones with the nuclear military power and the and the high-scale conventional power, but it s the south korean people are the one who will be the ultimate object. think about this, this is two manhattans stuffed into a bowl, surrounded by mountains, and the conventional north korean capability, guns and rockets just over the demilitarized zone, can fire thousands of rounds a minute out to a range beyond the city limits of seoul. so if we preempt and the north koreans start shooting south, tens of thousands of south koreans will die and that s why the vice president is there, to assure them, tell them what we re going to do, to calm their nerves and to send a signal to north korea that the united states is in the game, but we re not going to act without the assent of the south koreans. at a critical time like this i can t imagine two better panelists to have.