While there is a plethora of discussion and assertion and threat about North Korea and its nuclear capabilities and intentions, I find very little that — without sympathy or dismissal — endeavors to understand why we find ourselves in this dreadful standoff with Kim Jong Un. Mind you, I have no doubt but that both nations’ leaders are arrogant, paranoid, dishonest, and reckless, which furiously polarizes the situation and “fuels the fire.”
No one I have asked in my circle of friends and family knows about an Eisenhower “myth” that is very likely a major factor in North Korea’s obsession with nuclear weaponry. (A fine article by William I. Hitchcock, professor of history at the University of Virginia, explores this.) The myth holds that Ike . . .
. . . determined to redeem his campaign pledge to end the unpopular Korean War, passed along a secret message to the communist Chinese and the North Koreans: Agree to an armistice, or we will unleash our nuclear weapons on you.
It never happened, most historians assert, . Eisenhower reportedly did actually consider using nuclear weapons in Korea, and discussed it privately with his military staff, but never actually made such a threat. Nonetheless, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told a Life magazine reporter in 1956 that Ike had indeed misled the Chinese to believe that nuclear attack against them had been considered, even threatened, if Beijing did not accomplish the Korean Armistice Agreement. Dulles wanted to portray Eisenhower as potentially hawkish in promoting and protecting American national interests.
Unfortunately, the story of a daring Ike intimidating the North Koreans took root in the minds of a generation of nuclear strategists. From John F. Kennedy’s reliance on the threat of nuclear retaliation in the Cuban missile crisis to Richard M. Nixon’s efforts to persuade the North Vietnamese that he was a “madman” with a finger on the nuclear button, presidents have been susceptible to the myth that nuclear bluffing works.
This explains much of Donald Trump’s rhetoric, threats and bluster. But does it also explain the Kim family’s nuclear compulsions? Certainly, the 1956 magazine article would have come to the attention of Kim Il-sung, exacerbating his already florid paranoia and driving him to obtain the atomic bomb at all costs.
Indeed, the US had resorted to nuclear terrorism before, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and was certainly capable of doing it again. Most of the world deduced, soon after the atomic attacks, that the bombings were intended to hasten Japan’s formal surrender, which had been imminent, but delayed by Japanese pride. 100 miles across the Korea Strait, Korea was a protectorate of Japan, and many Koreans would have considered themselves targets of US terrorism. Kim Il-sung would have been deeply troubled by this, particularly as he became the Premier of North Korea in September 1948, which was closely allied with our Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union.
His son Kim Jong-il was immersed in the delusional obsession, which he passed on to Kim Jong-un (who obtained — predictably — college degrees in military science and physics). Thus, the 1950s’ lie about the Eisenhower myth accounts for much of the insanity and menace from North Korea today. (Of course, North Korea’s paranoia was severely worsened when the US violated the terms of the Korean Armistice Agreement by deploying nuclear weapons and munitions in South Korea in 1958, which had been explicitly forbidden.)
This tells me that the inconceivable power and destructiveness of nuclear weaponry can even be manipulated by the most subtle and seemingly indirect of groundless statements. Deliberate intimidation and saber-rattling are allthemore disruptive and hazardous.
Again: I have no sympathy or forgiveness for Kim and his family, and regard them as extraordinarily villainous and dangerously deranged. But I am convinced Kim’s desperation and determination (spawned in 1956 by a lie and aggravated in 1958 by treaty-violating nuclear deployments) are made far worse by Trump’s threats of preemptive strikes or annihilation, and they add righteousness and inevitability to Kim’s dauntlessness. Which, of course, makes us all much less safe. . .
