September 20, 2017
Would Trump attack North Korea? Here’s what we learned from his ‘Rocket Man’ speech at the U.N.
Donald Trump devoted a significant portion of his United Nations General Assembly remarks to North Korea’s nuclear and missile developments. Here are four things he told us (and didn’t).
1) The Trump administration really wants us to know that it does not believe North Korea can be deterred.
In recent weeks, top administration officials have suggested that they are not sure if North Korea is rational or deterrable. The link between these two concepts is important. If a leader is rational, he is capable of acting in his own self-interest. By extension, that leader is therefore deterrable, or responsive to coercive threatsthat instruct him not to take dangerous actions, or face punishment.
Read the full op-ed in The Washington Post.
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