I think this is one of the primary fears of left-leaning folks like me; this idea that a declaration of war against North Korea or a serious terrorist attack would induce a ‘rally-to-the-president’ effect and boost Trump’s popularity enough to the point that he and most GOP’ers win reelection in spite of their spectacularly unpopular domestic agenda. The obvious analogue to this would be W’s popularity after 9/11, and how the Iraq War was initially popular before it became an unjustifiable clusterfuck.
Hard to predict. Yes, the population normally rallies behind the President when the country is attacked. But as in many other areas, Trump is redefining what’s normal. People have been talking about how his clumsy foreign policy is provoking attacks. So if those attacks occur, the public reaction may be that Trump was a factor in causing the attacks and support for him could drop.
I don’t think it would. A war with North Korea would make all the other wars the US has been in since WWII combined look like child’s play. The number of casualties would probably be higher in the first week than what we’ve had in the entire War On Terror since 9/11/2001. It would likely involve nukes being dropped on civilian populations, the likely complete destruction of Seoul and the significant possibility of civilian American casualties. It would basically be a huge mess that would have major impacts on every ordinary American (at least those that are still alive). I assume most sane people realize that this would be nothing like Iraq or Afghanistan, and a lot more like WWII.
Edited to add. Yes, I know Roosevelt’s popularity went up with WWII, but Roosevelt did not start that war. If we go to war with NK it would almost certainly be Trump starting the war, not Kim.
I don’t think this is the same. 9/11 made Bush popular and made the nation rally around the flag because it was seen as something that *happened *to America, like how an earthquake or hurricane happens, as opposed to America voluntarily going out to seek a war.
A North Korean war might make Trump popular ***if ***1) it is perceived that North Korea attacked unprovoked and was the clearly wrong aggressor, ***and ***2) American victory is swift, clean and sweeping. If either 1# or 2# doesn’t fall Trump’s way, it won’t lead to a boost in popularity.
That being said, even in a badly managed war, the sense of ongoing crisis might lead to a “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” sentiment during an election.
Also, I think 9/11 happened when America was more “innocent” (for lack of a better way to put it) and would rally around the flag when attacked. Today, we’re so jaded and cynical that even a second 9/11 won’t make us unify together.
If it does happen, are we certain that we’ll know who attacked first? The situation will be chaotic, and the news reports frenzied, fast-changing and probably contradictory. I can easily imagine the Trump administration claiming that we responded militarily to a North Korean first strike, whether it’s true or not.
I’d guess that the current ‘one-third of Americans like Trump and two-thirds of Americans do not’ proportions would hold: the One Third will believe that Trump is bravely defending us against otherwise certain annihilation by the massive nuclear arsenal of Kim Jong Un.
And the Two Thirds will support American troops, but will loathe and despise Trump and his enablers for getting us into a colossally devastating–and unnecessary–war.
I expect a war with North Korea would be roughly similar to the Vietnam War or the original Korean War, with tens of thousands of dead Americans and a few million dead Asians. There’s some risk that Kim gets a direct hit on San Francisco or L.A. with a nuclear bomb and kills a million Americans, but I think that’s far from certain.
How can you claim it would “almost certainly” be Trump starting it? The North Koreans do all sorts of crazy shit that could lead to war. Just a few weeks ago they ran across the border and were shooting at a defector. Before that they shelled South Korean territory and sank a South Korean warship.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if North Korea decided to take a shot at one of our bomber demonstration flights near the border and that led to escalations that got us into a full-blown war.
The North Koreans have been doing “all sorts of crazy shit” since the end of the last Korean War. It hasn’t led to a resumption of hostilities because all the other relevant parties involved since then (the leaders of the USA, China, South Korea, and Japan) have been sane and realize that resuming the war could go in an unpredictable direction. Now we have Trump who sometimes does things just to piss off people he doesn’t like. While it’s certainly possible we will reach 2020 without incident, I don’t put it past Trump to wake up one morning and decide that particular day would be a good day to teach Kim Jong Un a lesson.
Yeah, that’s great, but do you recognize that it’s a distinct possibility that the North Koreans start a war, by doing something like torpedoing a USN destroyer, or shooting down a B-1B?
It’s possible, but unlikely. I also think that Lindsey Graham is being overly pessimistic in his estimate of a likelihood of war. What I think is a lot more likely than NK torpedoing one of our destroyers or shooting down one of our planes is that they continue testing nukes. Whether that will be enough to provoke Trump into action or not is the question.
A war with North Korea won’t start with North Korea attacking us. I’m not saying that based on an assessment of Kim’s mental state (he’s too crazy to be assessed), but based on the fact that they can’t attack us. They simply don’t have the means to do so. A war might start with Kim attacking Seoul, but that wouldn’t have nearly as galvanizing an effect on the populace as an attack on us would.
It’s hard to know exactly how Kim (and his military commanders) would respond because any action they take would be against what they perceive as a threat, which may be vastly different any threat the we constitute in reality. The same in reverse - any action we take will be based on how we perceive Kim’s short and long term behavior. If person A walks by person B and person by swings his hand wildly, person A might perceive that he’s being attacked by person B. In reality, person B might have been swatting a fly away from his head. Doesn’t matter - person A perceives it as a threat and punches person B’s lights out. It could happen like that.
Exactly! And this is important for people to understand. Yes, Trump is unpredictable and he’s potentially making a dangerous situation much worse, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Kim regime frequently behaves in a provocative manner. It’s possible that the military could behave in such a manner that Kim believes an attack is inevitable, baiting him into making the first move. How would the media be able to fact check any of this in the first chaotic days of what would be a catastrophic war? Even if reporters later uncover evidence that the military intentionally provoked Kim, there’s a school of thought which says that if ever a regime needed to be destroyed it’s this one.
Now, some folks could worry that we might get our hair mussed, but hey! All it’ll cost us is the obliteration of Seoul, the collapse of the South Korean economy and productive capacity, the deaths of untold millions, and a global economic crash that will make the Great Depression look like a hiccup – totally worth it!
Never assume that people are rational. Quite often, they are not.
It’s also worth noting that this administration’s worldview isn’t globalist; it’s nationalist, competitive. It’s not America-first, it’s America-only. We’re resurrecting the ghosts from the early part of the 20th Century. I’ll remind everyone: this is what we voted for.