A required read. I'm interested in LL's thoughts on this, given his experience in Korea.
It begins:
Obvious truth tends to die in Beltway media darkness, but The Washington Post finally noticed the intent and utility of the Trump administration’s orchestrated information warfare operation, something Observer readers know I began covering in March and emphasized in August and September while mainstream media dismissed Trump as incompetent.
On October 7, the Voice of America published what I’ll call a double-barreled article, meaning it combined a military-political intervention scenario and an indirect (or inadvertent) sampling of Trump’s information operation.
A message was sent, in other words, to the Norks, advising them of their options. Hint: Bad, or catastrophically bad.
...a nuclear exchange with the U.S. would mean devastation, submission to China would promise survival, and presumably a degree of continued autonomy. For all except those closest to Kim, the choice would not be a difficult one.
China’s strategic gains from a successful military intervention would include not only control of what happens on the Korean Peninsula, where it presumably would be able to establish military bases, but also regional gratitude for having prevented a catastrophic war.”
To put it colloquially, The Donald continues to mess with Rocket Man.
Several months ago, Trump decided to give North Korea a relentless dose of its own threat-theater bombast. Trump seeds his threat-theatrics with customized belittling designed to rattle an imperious autocrat (e.g., Crooked Hillary, Little Rocket Man). Trump is conducting an information warfare operation, and one Kim Jong Un and his regime have not confronted, especially one executed by an American president. Trump didn’t undermine Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when he tweeted that Tillerson was “wasting his time” negotiating with North Korea. That drama was “good cop, bad cop,” with the goal of rattling Kim. Nor does Trump undermine Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. That noted, at times it must astonish (and perhaps please) Mattis that this is the first time in his professional life he’s played the good cop.
Moreover, Trump’s information warfare operation isn’t all verbal theater, good cop-bad cop kabuki and tweetkrieg. The U.S. and its allies back the verbal assaults and tweets with shows of powerful and credible military force.
When juxtaposed, the article’s two barrels frame a choice for North Korea: Chinese intervention and survival versus Madman Trump’s war of annihilation. I’ll wager there are North Korean intelligence analysts and senior military officers who will read it that way and read it as a message. Kim Jong Un’s information warfare advisers certainly will.
I'd wager that when Little Rocketman goes to bed at night, he locks his door, and it's not to keep out the Trumpian boogerman, but his own men with long knives drawn.
A very good article. Plus, the newly smithed word "Tweetkrieg."
Whatever you think about Trump, he's completely unconventional, and he's upending politics both domestic and foreign. If he manages to solve the North Korean problem with out war, I'll be impressed.
"I'd wager that when Little Rocketman goes to bed at night, he locks his door, and it's not to keep out the Trumpian boogerman, but his own men with long knives drawn."
ReplyDeleteI think that's a very accurate statement. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.