On November 8, 2016, we elected Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. Since taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump has had three (3) National Security Advisors. The last one chosen, John Bolton, was a recess appointee of Pres. George W. Bush to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. His tenure lasted only about 16 months, because he could not survive Congressional questioning.
Bolton, an attorney and a now-former Fox News analyst, is a hyper-hawk, believing that there is a legal (and moral) justification for preemptive wars, including those launched against North Korea and Iran. In the face of Bolton’s foam-at-the-mouth version of nationalism, Trump is supposedly going to meet with North Korea’s President, Kim Jong Un, in May 2018.
The combination of Kim’s paranoia and Trump’s megalomania, stimulated by Bolton’s hyperbolic views of the dangers of dialogue, will not likely produce a happy ending to the meeting. In fact, Trump may simply go through the motions in order to provide justification for massive, “bloody-nose” military action against North Korea.
Notwithstanding America’s massive military might, it would not be wise to instigate a nuclear confrontation with a country armed with its own missile capabilities, especially when that country borders a nation with the world’s largest population, a…
