It’s a sad commentary on mainstream media bias that the tumult over what President Trump had to say about Charlottesville seems largely to have pushed aside the confrontation – one with possible nuclear consequences – between North Korea and the United States.
Just imagine – the ginned-up concern over whether the president tried to coddle white supremacist and neo-Nazis has come to eclipse what, for very good and obvious reasons, had almost everyone on the edge of their seats. And it’s not just that things seem to have calmed down somewhat. The unpredictability of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un means that it’s really not over until its over.
Some attribute the sudden lack of media focus on North Korea to a desire to embarrass Mr. Trump on the one hand and to deny him any credit for apparently defusing such an ominous situation on the other. Perhaps. Given how the president is treated by the media, that sounds plausible. But the North Korea situation brings to mind the significantly different approaches pursued by Presidents Obama and Trump on the issue of nuclear proliferation.
One can easily envision President Obama dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry with authorization to offer Kim Jong-un multiple millions of dollars if he would only rein in his nuclear aspirations. (President Clinton reportedly traded millions in aid money for such a promise from Kim Jong-un’s father and predecessor in an aborted effort to get North Korea out of the nuclear weapons game.)
Of course, Mr. Obama turned over nearly $2 billion to Iran and granted the Iranians a sweetheart nuclear deal to induce them to delay their development of nuclear weapons. President Obama touted his negotiating tactic as an effective alternative to a military approach in dealing with Iranian nuclear proliferation. The bottom line, of course, is that Iran’s nuclear aspirations have only been delayed for at best 15 years.
Consider, though, that North Korea has assisted Iran with its nuclear program and is at this point far more advanced than Iran was at the time it cut its nuclear deal with President Obama and the West.
In fact, North Korea now actually possesses nuclear weapons and a delivery system to boot. Yet President Trump eschewed any compromise approach and declared in no uncertain terms what would happen to North Korea if it embarked on nuclear adventurism. Makes us wonder what would have happened had President Obama taken advantage of Iran’s weakness at the time and forced certain conditions rather than giving away the store.