The Kim-Trump staredown

The bizarre public staredown between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump is unprecedented in American history.

It’s like one of those pre-fight weigh-ins of a couple of boxers, who stand nose to nose in mutual attempted intimidation with flashbulbs blazing and TV cameras rolling.

The unsettling difference is that the boxers always walk away from the weigh-in standoff.

We’re not guaranteed that that will be the outcome of the U.S.-North Korea tension.

Why does Kim seem bent on achieving long-range nuclear missile capability despite universal condemnation around the world, including from China and Russia?

Several reasons, most of them historical.

First, Kim has historical cause to believe that the West is out to destroy him and his country, despite protestations from the United States and the United Nations.

During the Korean War 65 years ago — which technically still continues because fighting was ended only by an armistice, not a peace treaty — U.S. bombers destroyed most of urban North Korea. The U.S. Air Force estimated that 18 of the 22 largest North Korean cities were at least half obliterated.

Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay said it best: “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too.”

Pyongyang, the North’s capital, was 75 percent flattened, and bombing there was finally called off because no more targets existed.

Almost every large building in North Korea was eliminated.

Trump’s threat of “fire and fury” has special meaning for Kim Jong Un.

Second, Kim has observed what happened to two dictators who did not achieve nuclear weapons for their nations.

Muammar Gaddafi, longtime military dictator of Libya, began clandestine development of nuclear weapons in the 1980s. But in the face of major threats from the West, he decided to halt that activity in 2003, shut down his nuclear apparatus and let the United States haul it off.

Subsequently, in 2011, a civil war unhorsed Gaddafi from power and opposition fighters captured, tortured and killed him.

The U.S., NATO and the U.N. had intervened several months earlier with air strikes against Gaddafi, and Libya is now a failed state with no one actually in charge.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein tried to join the nuclear club for a time, but was unable to do so, or unwilling to commit resources to actually achieve that goal. The United States invaded Iraq ostensibly to thwart his nuclear hopes.

It turned out that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

But if Hussein actually had nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them, against Israel or elsewhere, and had demonstrated that capability as North Korea has, the U.S. decision to invade Iraq could have been much more problematic.

Taking Gaddafi’s and Hussein’s fates into account, Kim has apparently decided his leverage is significantly greater if it’s backed by deliverable nuclear weapons.

His determination leaves the United States, and President Trump, with no good options. Despite Trump’s tough talk, there’s no acceptable military solution to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat.

Seoul, South Korea’s capital, lies a scant local bus ride south of the Demilitarized Zone, with a huge North Korean army poised just above it. The North’s nuclear weapons locations are not all known to us, and destroying them without their retaliation would be impossible.

South Korea and Japan have both chosen not to pursue nuclear weapons, relying instead on American defenses against attack. In addition, some 35,000 American troops are stationed in South Korea, and would be instant targets from the North.

American leaders for many years have declared that we cannot tolerate a North Korea armed with nuclear missiles.

They haven’t said exactly what we can do about it.    

The most dangerous nuclear confrontation to date in American history was of course the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

The Soviet Union had shipped missiles to Cuba, and the United States government was unwilling to let them stay.

A 13-day confrontation ensued, with President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev going eye-to-eye. Most of Kennedy’s military team urged military action.

But Kennedy, realizing that an estimated 600,000 Americans would die in the initial Soviet missile attack from Cuba, was determined to avoid war. His negotiations with Khrushchev finally bore fruit, with the U.S.S.R. removing the missiles and the U.S. agreeing to do the same with some of our missiles that we had placed in friendly nations around Russia’s perimeter.

Both Kim and Trump could learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Kennedy had recently read historian Barbara Tuchman’s masterpiece “The Guns of August,” describing how World War I erupted despite no one’s understanding a need for it.

He determined he would not be a party to a repeat performance.

It takes two to tango, of course.

If Kim decides to make war despite our best efforts to prevent it, whatever those might be, we will retaliate in full force. The world will never be the same.

Jackie Kennedy, after the president’s assassination, handwrote a note to Khrushchev that deserves retelling:

“You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones.

“While big men know the needs for self-control and restraint, little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride.”