North Korea And Trump

23 Sep 2017

After seeing Trump’s recent tweets for the past few days, I’m getting even more concerned about America’s current state of leadership.

Seeing his Tweet about firing NFL players if they kneeling or sitting down during the NFL anthem is antithetical to what America stands for. Soldiers fight for this country to protect the constitution, not the flag. What I find more alarming than Trump’s divisive language is that he is quite hypocritical. He seems to be anti political correctness and pro free speech, yet he furthers this message that NFL players that do not participate in the pledge of allegiance should be fired.

At first, I thought this tweet was to distract the American people from the escalating tensions between North Korea and the US. Nevertheless, I was proven wrong when I saw that he wrote 9 hours later, tweeting “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”

His approach towards North Korea is alarming and not effective at all. He wants to show that he is tough which I understand, but constantly escalating the rhetoric won’t help. I believe he should keep his rhetoric down low while putting pressure on China and Russia to place economic sanctions will put enough pressure towards North Korea to give up its arms eventually.

Curbing the North Korea issue requires patience similar to the long conflict with Russia in the Cold War. Specifically, Trump can learn from John F. Kennedy’s solution towards the Cuban Missile Crisis with a naval blockade. Trump needs to be patient and resort to the international community to put pressure on North Korea.

We must understand that North Korea has demonstrated that it can actually cause great harm to US allies such as South Korea and Japan. If it launches a missile towards either country, that would cause economic instability, kill many innocent lives, and spark an unnecessary war.

Also, we should be aware of North Korea developing its warfare in the cyber arena. North Korea has been developing its cyber capabilities and have been training the brightest young civilians to learn how to hack. Most recently, North Korea has been trying to hack the bitcoin blockchain infrastructure to steal bitcoins to fund the regime. With technologies growing ever so quickly, the US should develop its own program to prepare for cyber warfare. Soon enough, wars we be conducted more and more through hacking and defense against it.

The North Korean issue should not be taken lightly and trump’s hostile language towards North Korea just brings us closer to direct and military conflict.