NY Times Editorial Board Really Wants President Trump To Stop Being Mean To North Korea

On the “straight” news pages, the NY Times has called the North Korea situation a “slow motion Cuban missile crisis.” On the opinion pages, the Editorial Board almost seems to be taking North Korea’s side in order to Bash Trump, their favorite game

President Trump’s Loose Talk on North Korea

As a candidate, Donald Trump seemed to pay no more attention to North Korea’s accelerating nuclear weapons program, which his predecessor has warned is America’s most urgent threat,…

Actually, Obama said that ‘climate change’ was America’s, and the world’s, most urgent issue. But, in all due respect, Obama had the right idea in mostly ignoring North Korea’s, or, to be specific, Kim Jong-un’s, provocations. Typically, when the North Korean leaders became frisky and bombastic, the United States, the U.N., and other nations gave them stuff. Like when Bill Clinton gave them a nuclear reactor. Of course, NK tested lots of nuclear bombs and long range missiles during Obama’s time. But, they would anyhow. Obama didn’t give them anything for those provocations.

…than he did to other complex foreign policy issues. Now he is paying attention, but not in a helpful way. His intemperate talk is adding to regional tensions, unnerving allies and likely reinforcing North Korea’s longstanding fear that it could one day be attacked by America — the very reason North Korea invested in a nuclear arsenal in the first place.

It would be risky for Mr. Trump to let overconfidence and bombast, expressed in tweets and public statements, box him into some kind of showdown with the North’s ruthless leader, Kim Jong-un, who has displayed similarly macho traits. South Korea, Japan and even Russia have urged both sides to avoid a devastating miscalculation.

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