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“I don’t bluff”

Secretary Kerry told the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul last week, apropos of “denuclearizing” North Korea:

We are prepared, as we have said, and the President – if there’s one phrase that sticks out in me that the President has used with me a number of times, beginning with when I was talking to him about this job and taking it on and I wanted to be certain that I wasn’t misrepresenting him anywhere in the world about his position with respect to Iran or elsewhere, he said to me very simply, “I don’t bluff.” And I think that those who have seen him execute on his promise that if he had actionable information he would do what he needed to do with it, even if it meant crossing another country’s border and taking action, we saw with respect to Usama bin Ladin that the President doesn’t bluff.

This is pretty dramatic stuff.  No wonder the intelligence community gets spun up about the reliability of varying estimates.  While the American press gets agitated about a missile test, Kerry is telling us the Americans will go to war if they have to to prevent North Korea from weaponizing its nukes or Iran from obtaining them.

That’s at least how I interpret what Kerry said.  The two situations differ however in important ways.  America’s South Korean allies are discouraging the Americans from acting.  The risks to Seoul from a North Korean artillery attack are serious.  Some of America’s Israeli allies are contentiously urging them on in private, even while kissing and making up in public.

The common denominator, no matter who urges what, is that diplomatic solutions would be far better than military ones, but getting satisfactory diplomatic solutions depends on a credible threat of military force.  The two situations are not entirely independent of each other.  North Koreans are certainly watching what the US does with Iran.  And the Iranians are watching what the US does with North Korea.

This puts President Obama on the spot.  The international success of his presidency depends on blocking Iran from getting nuclear weapons and preventing North Korea from weaponizing the ones it already has.  Either development would be a serious threat to the United States and its allies, leading to nuclear arms races in East Asia and the Middle East.  I’m not at all convinced that there is necessarily a diplomatic solution either with Iran or North Korea.  But I’m sure the President is correct to try to exhaust the diplomatic options before resorting to uses of force that predictably would have unpredictable consequences.