Is War With Iran Or North Korea Inevitable?
In his Tuesday  October 17  2017 column our old friend Pat Buchanan asked the question  in light of President Trumpâs decision not to certify that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in compliance with their nuclear weapons deal with Obama  is war with Iran now inevitable?
As  President Trump  weighs the appropriate response to the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran  Democrats have  for their own political purposes  made  President Trump  out to be a warmonger in much the same way that they tried to make Ronald Reagan out to be a warmonger who was pushing the world toward nuclear destruction when he refused to accept Soviet nuclear superiority.
Today  we see narratives similar to the one used against Reagan being developed and used against  President Trump ; for example  an October 16  2017 op-ed in The Washington Post by New York University Professor Steven J. Brams advocated a âNo First Useâ of nuclear weapons declaration by the United States as way of defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Even though much of the pushback against Reagan turned out to be Soviet-inspired propaganda and information warfare  the image of Reagan as a warmonger stuck in the minds of the Left-leaning media and it has been all too easy to transfer the idea and apply it to  Donald Trump .
This is very much the situation before  President Trump  today as  he  considers  his  options with regard to North Korea and Iran: Is it better to be safe than sorry? Should we strike now or in the near future in order to prevent a predicted (actually known in the case of both North Korea and Iran) enemy from obtaining nuclear weapons and changing the balance of power or otherwise behaving in a manner that we would judge to be intolerable.
The question for  President Trump  is at what point do the other options available to stop the threat be judged failures and the tipping point of our tolerance be judged to have been reached?
President Trumpâs statements implying that both Iran and North Korea are fast reaching the tipping point where preemption would be justified do not make him a warmonger  rather they mean that  Donald Trump  has come down on the side of Reagan and Goldwater and embraced the United Statesâ global role as the principal guardian of world order  and that  he  has concluded that role requires America to maintain the capability to behave preventively  and to be willing to use it.
In his Tuesday  October 17  2017 column our old friend Pat Buchanan asked the question  in light of President Trumpâs decision not to certify that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in compliance with their nuclear weapons deal with Obama  is war with Iran now inevitable?
As   [TGT] weighs the appropriate response to the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran  Democrats have  for their own political purposes  made   [TGT] out to be a warmonger in much the same way that they tried to make Ronald Reagan out to be a warmonger who was pushing the world toward nuclear destruction when he refused to accept Soviet nuclear superiority.
Today  we see narratives similar to the one used against Reagan being developed and used against  [TGT]  ; for example  an October 16  2017 op-ed in The Washington Post by New York University Professor Steven J. Brams advocated a âNo First Useâ of nuclear weapons declaration by the United States as way of defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Even though much of the pushback against Reagan turned out to be Soviet-inspired propaganda and information warfare  the image of Reagan as a warmonger stuck in the minds of the Left-leaning media and it has been all too easy to transfer the idea and apply it to  [TGT]  .
This is very much the situation before  [TGT] today as   [TGT]   considers   [TGT]   options with regard to North Korea and Iran: Is it better to be safe than sorry? Should we strike now or in the near future in order to prevent a predicted (actually known in the case of both North Korea and Iran) enemy from obtaining nuclear weapons and changing the balance of power or otherwise behaving in a manner that we would judge to be intolerable.
The question for  [TGT] is at what point do the other options available to stop the threat be judged failures and the tipping point of our tolerance be judged to have been reached?
President Trumpâs statements implying that both Iran and North Korea are fast reaching the tipping point where preemption would be justified do not make  [TGT]  a warmonger  rather they mean that   [TGT] has come down on the side of Reagan and Goldwater and embraced the United Statesâ global role as the principal guardian of world order  and that   [TGT]   has concluded that role requires America to maintain the capability to behave preventively  and to be willing to use it.