Trump's Cuban Missile Crisis

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was young, very interested in current events and enamored with President Kennedy. I remember when Kennedy ran for president. He spoke outside our church in BrooklyIn. Just before he finished his short speech, I ran to a corner where I thought he would pass in his open car and waited. I lucked out. His car passed where I was hoping it would. I was the only one on that street corner. I waved, he waved back. For a brief moment, we looked at each other. My only claim to having met a future president. October, 1962. I still remember the tension in the air. Seeing the movement of troops on TV. Walter Cronkite. Watching President Kennedy firmly citing the Monroe Doctrine as a basis for an eyeball to eyeball, toe to toe confrontation with the Soviet Union, what President Reagan would later call, the Evil Empire.

Kennedy knew what was at stake...the lives of 150 million people, the survival of the United States, the continuance of the greatest republic, the defender of the majority of the world's democracies. Of course, the North Korea and Cuba situations are not a perfect comparison. In many ways, North Korea is a potentially more powerful threat than Cuba ever was. Pyongyang doesn't need her benefactor to start WW3. North Korea has everything it needs to do so, or will very shortly, and it will not care about international law or Geneva conventions. China has much more to lose than North Korea. A war that might force China to intervene on the wrong side will put the Chinese economy in a bad way. If China suspects an overheat, they will probably step in. What that would look like is anyone's guess. The question many are asking is 'How crazy is the little fat guy?' President Kennedy stared down Krushchev and Castro–and they blinked, some say at a cost of our missile installations in Turkey. No one knows if those missiles were actually removed. The United States never showed any photographic evidence of their removal. The concept of mutually assured destruction won because the Soviet Union, for all their Braggadocio, was rational.

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Today, we have a rogue nation, North Korea, with China watching its back, wondering sometimes why they bother. Unlike Kennedy, we have had a collection of presidents knowing what was going on in North Korea but not willing to apply any more pressure than sanctions that did nothing. Yes, the safety of our country was, and is again, on the line. Kennedy took on the instigator of the crisis, the Soviet Union. Castro, although not all together innocent, was almost a bit player, a pawn between two of the most powerful nations on earth. Today, Trump is dealing directly with the perpetrator nation and the powerful Chinese are standing by with dwindling patience. As President Kennedy could not allow missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba, so President Trump cannot allow Pyongyang the same. North Korea is a hardcore communist nation. It has a GDP of almost zero. Kim Jong Un is a young, untested, unpredictable leader of twenty-five million people who have no outside contact, no internet, and hardly any indoor plumbing. Their commitment to their government and 'theology' is their individual survival. There is no question that a military conflict with the United States would be devastating to North Korea, but at what expense? Seoul...an aircraft carrier...,the State of Hawaii? Roll the dice on this one.