Do Democrats Want a War With North Korea?

Just a year ago, liberals were terrified of Trump starting a war with North Korea. Now they seem scared he might defuse the standoff with Pyongyang.

Korean Leaders Moon Jae-in And Kim Jong-Un Hold Surprise Second Summit

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meeting with South Korean president Moon Jae-in on May 26, 2018 in Panmunjom, North Korea. South Korean Presidential Blue House via Getty Images


It was only a year ago that high-profile Democrats and liberals were terrified by the prospect of Donald Trump starting a war with North Korea. Now it seems the only thing that scares them more is the prospect of peace.

With a week to go until Trump’s historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore, top Senate Democrats have signed on to a letter laying out a set of stringent demands they insisted must be met for them to support a deal. These demands include, among other things, complete denuclearization, as well as “anywhere, anytime” inspections.

Trump accused Democrats of “rooting against” the negotiations, and it’s hard not to see it that way. An immediate agreement on full denuclearization, for instance, is a tall order given that North Korea’s leadership has seen what’s happened to other states that agreed to give up their WMDs. MIT political scientist Vipin Narang called the demands “delusional” and compared them to something John Bolton would have written, while Arms Control Today’s Kingston Reif called the letter an “ill-advised attempt by the Dem leadership to get to the right of Trump,” laying out an “aggressively maximalist standard” that, if applied to Iran, would have ruled out Obama’s nuclear deal with that country.

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