Trump’s war made North Korea problem even worse: security expert

U.S. President Donald Trump is defending his war against Iran as a matter of national security and claiming that he prevented the regime in Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. But according to a column by Bloomberg News' Andreas Kluth, Trump's war is making one of the United States' most dangerous allies even more of a threat: North Korea.

"For decades, during which American presidents have sloppily lumped its dictatorship with other bogeys in the Middle East as part of woolly 'axes of evil' and such, North Korea has arguably been the greatest threat to the United States and its treaty allies South Korea and Japan," explains Kluth, known for his heavy focus on national security and geopolitics. "And each time the U.S. threw its military might against those other targets — Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran — Pyongyang, under successive generations of the Kim dynasty, became more convinced that the only way to forestall an American attack would be to have its own nukes. And not just a few, but enough to overwhelm America's missile defenses."

Kluth warns that Kim Jong Un, North Korea's communist dictator, "has an arsenal that is impressive in the most diabolical way."

"He has an estimated 50 atomic warheads and enough enriched uranium to build 50 more," Kluth notes. "North Korea also produces enough fissile material to keep adding about 20 warheads a year indefinitely. It appears to aim at minimum for parity with nuclear powers such as France or Britain, which each have over 200. Kim's weapons range from relatively 'small' tactical nukes, equivalent to the Hiroshima blast, say, that he could use in battle against South Korea to huge thermonuclear bombs that could take out entire American cities…. By contrast, Iran had no nukes when the U.S. attacked it, either last June or this February. Nor was Tehran actively seeking to build any, according to U.S. intelligence assessments."

Kluth interviewed U.S. State Department veteran Joel Wit, who said that Kim Jong Un is "probably happy" with current events in the Middle East.

"The ill-advised American war against Iran thus appears to have made the problem of North Korea worse," according to Kluth. "A dictator who already felt stronger than he was in Trump's first term now wields more diplomatic clout and military power, even as he has reason to be even more paranoid about the potentially lethal unpredictability of his counterpart in the White House. Kim Jong Un is more dangerous than he has ever been, and the United States appears unable to do anything about it."

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