Trump to Norks: UN sanctions 'nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen'

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives September 13, 2017

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

The UN sanctions are pretty close to nothing. That's for sure. We dealt with that yesterday. If Hans Blix shows up with that sternly worded letter, you know what's going to happen to him. As for Donald Trump, I certainly hope he's prepared to back up his talk with action, because he's giving us an awful lot of talk when it comes to North Korea. This is the sort of action we needed four years ago. And eight years ago. And 12 years ago. But I could go on. You get the idea.

Right now, we need it now. Is Trump prepared to do what other presidents couldn't bring themselves to do? He says he is:

President Trump warned North Korea on Tuesday that the sanctions imposed a day earlier on the regime by the U.N. Security Council are “nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen.” The president’s comments are the latest tough talk against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has dramatically escalated his country’s nuclear and missile tests in recent weeks. The Security Council on Monday voted unanimously to impose tougher economic sanctions, about a week after North Korea claimed to have conducted an underground hydrogen bomb test. “We think it’s just another very small step -- not a big deal,” Trump said Tuesday, referring to his and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's view of the sanctions. "I don't know if it has any impact, but certainly it was nice to get a 15-to-nothing vote. But those sanctions are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen," he said.

What will ultimately have to happen is that Kim Jong Un will have to fall from power, preferably as a precursor to Korean unification, although I'm sure China will resist that outcome. It may be that we can only get them on board to support Kim's fall if we agree to let them install another communist regime in his place. I don't like that idea at all. In fact, I hate it. But preventing nuclear holocaust at the hands of a lunatic is a tad bit higher priority. I wonder if Trump and his military advisors actually have a notion in their heads for how this regime change happens. I'm sure they've gamed out military scenarios, but if there's one that doesn't put hundreds of thousands of South Korean lives at risk, I'll be surprised. It's possible there are also clandestine operations already underway that they would obviously not tell the public about. In fact, if there are any such operations, I hope the circle of those in the know is as tight as possible because there are obviously lots of people who would run and blab the details to the New York Times or the Washington Post just as a way of screwing Trump. Either way, he's right that it has to happen. And most people who say there's no clean way to do it are probably right as well. Yet we can't sit around waiting forever because his nuclear capabilities only become more advanced with every passing month. We can't wait, and we can't sit around imagining him to be rational like Susan Rice does. He has to go. The only question is how, and whether the U.S. can enlist any allies to help in the effort - and, of course, what price they would extract from us for doing so. You don't prevent nuclear annihilation without greasing some palms, you know. Not in the realpolitik, geopolitical world of today.