The world waits with bated breath as a “mad king” descends on Singapore, his finger itching to press the launch button and totally destroy his adversaries. Few disagree that a “radical and absolutist” dictator who can “use the power of the state to suppress the opposition while shielding itself from all potential sanction or limitation” should not have access to a possibly world-ending arsenal of nuclear weapons.
“Surrounded by a clique of sycophants who are willing to justify any course he might take,” there is little stopping this impulsive ruler from making a sudden, cataclysmic decision that could forever alter the course of human history. Indeed, “a party organized around a single extreme personality seems like a brittle proposition.” With this “cult of personality” in place, his people will be dragged unwittingly and hopelessly into the nuclear abyss along with him.
It turns out that the only person standing between this man and the destruction he portends may be North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Time (6/7/18) was just one of many outlets that depicted Donald Trump as a “king-in-waiting”—yet corporate media still expressed general dismay that the “leader of the free world” would accept a meeting with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.
In the weeks leading to the historic summit between US President Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Kim, corporate media have lamented many ways the former is converting the presidency into an authoritarian institution. Quoted above, Time (6/7/18), the New York Times (6/3/18), The Week (6/5/18) and The Atlantic (6/7/18) all referred to Trump as a king-in-waiting when he declared a unilateral power to pardon himself.
Esquire (6/4/18), unwilling to publish the word “president” without an asterisk, sees the whole Trump apparatus edging dangerously toward dictatorship, a point on which the Daily Beast (6/1/18) concurred after Trump called for the firing of TBS’s Samantha Bee. The Times (6/7/18) similarly warned of a dictatoresque cult forming around him, while the Washington Post (6/8/18) worried that Trump’s narcissism is isolating the United States from any potential allies.
With an arsenal of over 6,000 nuclear warheads at its disposal, one might expect this concern over the United States’ authoritarian trajectory to be reflected in analysis of events as they unfolded in Singapore. But when corporate media’s focus turns outward, it seems the only radical, isolated and cultish dictator we need to worry about is Kim.
According to Harry J. Kazianis (CNBC, 6/6/18), Trump has already handed over “the ultimate concession, a legitimizing meeting with the leader of the free world—for nothing in return.” The New York Times (6/6/18) also noted that the mere occurrence of a summit with the United States might have resuscitated the image of “a murderous dictator and nuclear lunatic”—referring to Kim. Nevertheless, NBC (6/11/18) envisioned a “best-case scenario” in which Trump-qua-president secures the “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program.”
If Trump really is transforming the office of the president (and the United States along with it) into a hermit kingdom, it is hard to see what is left to justify his insistence that North Korea surrender its nuclear weapons. Trump was already said to have relinquished US moral authority as soon as he took office (FAIR.org, 3/20/17). Both countries cite security concerns, but only one is guilty of waging a campaign of mass murder in the other’s territory (FAIR.org, 9/27/17). And US behavior in Iraq and Libya following disarmament of those countries revealed the worthlessness of its word on this issue (Foreign Policy, 5/30/18), long before Trump reneged on the international agreement with Iran.
A healthy concern about Trump’s authoritarianism is certainly warranted (FAIR.org, 2/3/17), but by construing his domestic politics as the work of an unprincipled, unpredictable and increasingly dangerous tyrant, corporate media have illuminated the fact that there is only one remaining idea that makes a qualitative difference between the president’s nuclear arsenal and North Korea’s: American exceptionalism.
Anders Corr illustrated the exceptionalist logic in Forbes (4/30/17). “North Korea,” he explains, “is an autocracy that violates human rights and international law and therefore cannot be trusted with this most destructive of weapons.” Western nuclear powers, on the other hand, “are mature democracies that have shown strong support for core international values like democracy, human rights, environmental sustainability and international law.” In other words, as Hillary Clinton once put it, “America is great because America is good.”
For pundits like Corr, the source of the United States’ self-evident legitimacy as a nuclear power lies in its supposed pluralism. In their clarion call about the cult of Trump rising within the Republican Party, the New York Times editorial board (6/7/18) noted that, “by contrast, Democrats show signs of taking a more pluralistic approach,” which “might result in at least one party oriented around a set of ideas.”
The pluralistic symbolism of Barack Obama’s presidency had warded off concerns about Washington’s nuclear capabilities (New York Times, 11/4/08), despite his willingness to wage war in over half a dozen countries and his $1 trillion program to “modernize” the US arsenal. If corporate media can lay responsibility for emerging authoritarianism at the feet of Trump alone, the thinking goes, then the potential for a pluralistic renaissance preserves US ascendancy as a nuclear power. Contrariwise North Korea, lacking pluralist potential, is by definition a threat to the world order.
The Washington Post (1/3/18) downplays the role that the US’s thousands of nuclear warheads played in the old normal.
Even still, Trump pushed the envelope and caused much consternation among media elites by suggesting that the United States would be willing to strike first with a nuclear weapon. Rick Noack wrote for the Washington Post (1/3/18) that, prior to Trump, “US leaders have been dissuaded from nuclear-weapons use by moral restraint”—though in fact, as other commentators have long pointed out (e.g., Foreign Policy, 2/19/13), the US is “the country most staunchly opposed to renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons.”
Despite its ignoble status as the only nation in the world to have actually dropped atomic bombs on one of its enemies, the United States’ reputed moral eminence has always served as the basis of apologia for its nuclear aggression. While former US President Harry Truman initially held that “a quarter of a million of the flower of our manhood were worth a couple of Japanese cities,” the evident horrors of nuclear annihilation forced a change in this moral analysis. By 1959, Truman had reconfigured his argument, telling students at Columbia University (Truman Speaks, p. 67) that “the dropping of the bomb stopped the war, saved millions of lives.”
The notion that US nuclear weapons have “saved millions of lives” is so entrenched in the minds of most Americans that Japanese historian Sadao Asada (Living With the Bomb, p. 177) refers to it as “the Truman orthodoxy.” But political scientist Richard Price (The Chemical Weapons Taboo, p. 40) identifies this rationale with a more general US proclivity “to marry the logic of the pursuit of unlimited technological efficiency with the avoidance of war and the amelioration of suffering.” Trump’s bellicose statements and questionable integrity have the awkward effect of undermining a doctrine at the heart of US national identity.
On the eve of the summit, the New York Times (6/11/18) primed its readers by enumerating North Korea’s moral disqualifications, which include torture, imprisonment without trial and assassination programs—which are also, of course, features of the US imperial system. As Glenn Greenwald (Guardian, 2/18/13) observed years ago, “that the US, due to its objective superiority, is not bound by the same rules as others is the most cherished and aggressively guarded principle” in foreign policy circles.
Despite recognizing the damage Trump has done to this axiom, corporate media are unlikely to change their attitude toward a confrontation between the world’s most and least powerful nuclear nations. For now, like Trump and Kim, America’s exceptionalism reigns supreme.
“The notion that US nuclear weapons (at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) have ‘saved millions of lives’ …”
— You might have mentioned that Japan had been trying to surrender for about a month before August 6, its major condition being preservation of the emperor. (The U.S. demanded unconditional surrender … after which it let Japan keep the emperor.)
Had Truman accepted the surrender in July, even more hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved. But then the Soviet Union and others wouldn’t have had the benefit of seeing atomic bombs in action.
I read that the military has movies of all of the death and destruction, but that no one of the public can see it. I would like this film work to run in all media on Aug 6th every year. Although, after reading HIROSHIMA.” reading about upturned eyes melting , and the grabbing of a man’s hand to help him into a boat—–but having the skin of the hand slip off like a glove….I did see a photo of the shadow of a human being burnt into a wall once. A person would hope that after seeing all the horror, even reading it——–that, We the Earthlings——– would want this to stop————I guess not
Brandishing the beam in thine own eye
Brandishing the beam in thine own eye
Here is copy of an article I submitted to Daily Kos on May 16 on the subject of North Korea. Daily Kos allows full reprints of their articles in other media so this does not violate copyright. If FAIR wishes to reprint this as a full article I’d be quite pleased.
TITLE: Nonsense about North Korea
It is deeply dishonest to claim that possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea poses any threat of attack to the U.S. or any other country. I have seen this claim repeated ad nauseam in the mainstream media. “Missiles that could reach Washington”.
The North Koreans know full well that if they launch any nuclear attack on anyone, they will be blown to smithereens. It follows that they are not a threat to us or any of their neighbors.
Previous to Donald Trump, U.S. policy toward North Korea has been part of a very serious international effort to prevent more countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. In pursuing this policy, we were never prepared to go beyond imposing trade sanctions on North Korea, because we never needed to go beyond that. The objective was to show other countries that they would be severely punished with trade embargoes if they tried to acquire nuclear weapons.
The only danger posed by acquisition of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be their sale to rogue actors. And this is something that requires constant vigilance.
Then came Donald J. Trump. In most areas the power of the presidency is sharply constrained by Congress and the courts and the Constitution. But in foreign affairs, the president has much greater latitude. While there are some who think Donald Trump cannot add two and two, they are deeply mistaken. He full well realizes that foreign relations is one arena in which he has much more freedom of action, and can construct his own reality show, can grandstand and preen and create a starring role for himself by creating conflict and drama in which he can appear to be strong and resolute, and wield the mighty powers of the American military and the American capacity to impose trade sanctions. Also the power to withdraw the U.S. from treaties. And, for the sake of looking powerful, and “shaking things up”, he is willing to wield these powers without regard for negative consequences. Move our embassy to Jerusalem. Duck out of the global warming treaty. Impose tariffs that go down well in the rust belt. Play up the idea that previous governments have screwed our public with disadvantageous trade agreements. It’s all about Donald Trump looking strong and pleasing certain constituencies.
Trump saw North Korea as a wonderful opportunity for playing the strong man, saber rattling on a stage where he could foment tension and beat the war drums and play commander in chief and grab the attention of the world, through bullying a weak isolated country with no real friends that was defiantly refusing to fall in line with the international campaign to prevent nuclear proliferation.
Trump saw — quite correctly — that he could win public adulation by brandishing American military might in an apparently just cause, calculating this is a battle he should be able to win, using threats and schoolyard insults that would create immense public excitement, and would validate his claim of being the great negotiator, that would prove his crude and uniquely Trumpian method actually works.
If — as seems likely from events of the past 24 hours — this approach has failed, it seems quite possible he may attempt actual military action to dethrone Kim Jong Un, which might transpire if North Korea is firm in backing away from promises of total denuclearization. Which could be a terrible disaster if his generals fail to dissuade him.
I conclude by repeating that total denuclearization of North Korea would not add one tiny bit to our national security, because these weapons never posed a serious threat, except in the words of deeply dishonest officials and a deeply dishonest mainstream media.
The only positive result I can see coming from the entire exercise is if North and South Korea follow through with the rapprochement that began some months ago. And I would credit Mr. Trump with having precipitated it. Hopefully his blustering and bullying and charm offensive will have helped push the two Koreas together.
I would worry about myself for failing to understand the point this author is making if I had similar trouble with hundreds of other articles I have read at FAIR, but I haven’t. Maybe the other writers on this site have been keeping it simple for me so that I can comprehend their thoughts and the editor let this complicated one slip through. Kim is a third-generation tyrant who has resisted the Western Empire and its machinations successfully at great cost to the North Korean people while the Empire slathered the South with money and protection. The Western or American Empire has been under construction since WWII, and has not suffered any slow-down or halt since then regardless of who was Emperor. The only difference now is that the Emperor is allowed to act like one. Trump is a wily fellow, and he may be the one that allows the ruling class to drop all pretense about democracy, egalitarianism, socialism, and equality under the law. By raising up the authoritarian dictators of the world, he diminishes the leaders of more representative governments of the world. They will have no choice but to move right.
The article is not hard to understand. A fundamental principle of Americanism (the religion of the mainstream press and politicians) is that America can do no wrong because it is inherently and self-evidently good. It is therefore not bound by the moral and legal norms to which it would hold other nations. The American press’s coverage of the Trump-Kim summit reflects this core belief.
Mr O’Day and J.D Crutchfield are spot on – it hurts to look in the mirror.
A good book on the subject of American (actually “US”) exceptionalism is the one by Geoffrey Hodgkin, which I believe is called “The Myth of American Exceptionalism” — easy and engaging to get through.
I still haven’t made up my mind whether the writers for the big publications that spout this exceptionalism rationale actually BELIEVE it or whether its simply careerist PANDERING… I’m currently leaning towards the latter for most cases. Ultimately it doesn’t matter I know…
How more people I know and others don’t know FAIR is beyond me, its work isn’t more widely shared is stunning. great work as always FAIR!
How more people I know and others don’t know FAIR is beyond me, its work isn’t more widely shared is stunning. great work as always FAIR!
Gregory Kruse, this statement you made is an interesting one: “the only difference now is that the Emperor is allowed to act like one. Trump is a wily fellow, and he may be the one that allows the ruling class to drop all pretense about democracy, egalitarianism, socialism, and equality under the law. By raising up the authoritarian dictators of the world, he diminishes the leaders of more representative governments of the world. They will have no choice but to move right.” This describes the U.S. such that the so-called private sector–capital–rules with no dividing line between monied interests and political power. No pretense, as you say. The private sector rules directly. That is about a good description of fascism as any.
Gregory Kruse, this statement you made is an interesting one: “the only difference now is that the Emperor is allowed to act like one. Trump is a wily fellow, and he may be the one that allows the ruling class to drop all pretense about democracy, egalitarianism, socialism, and equality under the law. By raising up the authoritarian dictators of the world, he diminishes the leaders of more representative governments of the world. They will have no choice but to move right.” This describes the U.S. such that the so-called private sector–capital–rules with no dividing line between monied interests and political power. No pretense, as you say. The private sector rules directly. That is about a good description of fascism as any.
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