Trump and the Lesson Learned by Johnson

I feel fun in striking panic and disturbance into my opponent and seeing his reaction. Achieving notoriety, rather than becoming an unknown man, brings more profits than losses.

These sentences are from a book authored by US President Donald Trump.

His abnormal likings are reflected in a concentrated way in the US policy hostile towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

He uttered such violent words as "fire and fury," "total destruction," "ready for a war" and "the one and only way" on official occasions including the UN arena and on his Twitter account, making a nuclear war against the DPRK a fait accompli.

The US dispatched a huge amount of strategic nuclear assets including carrier strike groups to south Korea and its surrounding waters, and B-1B strategic bombers flew into the sky over the East Sea of Korea, creating a touch-and-go situation. In December it conducted the largest-ever joint air exercise with south Korea. The US railroaded superintends sanctions resolutions one after another through the UN Security Council with a view to "totally cutting off the lifeline of north Korea," and has blackmailed big and small countries into joining in its attempts to impose political and economic blockade on the country, the worst of its kind.

But Trump's policy of maximum pressure failed to surprise or pull down the country.

High-ranking political figures and former public servants of the US, including the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate, said: Trump is straining the relations with north Korea unnecessarily; he should stop reckless blackmailing of the country and keep his hands off the Korean issue.

Although Trump took office in his advanced years to everybody's surprise, he still has many things to learn as he is yet a political neophyte.

He is well advised to learn the lessons Johson learned 50 years ago from the Pueblo incident, which shook the world. The then US President Johnson was informed, in his pyjamas at midnight on January 23, 1968, that the US armed spy ship Pueblo was captured by the Navy of the Korean People's Army. He concluded that "demonstration of power" was the only way to bring the DPRK to its knees. According to his order, nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise and other huge military forces were dispatched to the waters around the Korean peninsula. Then the US threatened that it would strike the Wonsan Port and other strategic targets in North Korea as a "punitive measure," if necessary.

To cope with this, the DPRK declared that it would answer "retaliation" with retaliation and "all-out war" with all-out war. Immediately it switched over to war readiness and demonstrated its strength, making public for the first time its ground-to- air missiles which had so far been unknown to the US.

Frightened by the DPRK's resolute and hard-line countermeasures, Johnson gave up the "demonstration of power" and had the aggressive forces in and around south Korea withdrawn two weeks later.

Trump has dispatched huge aggressive forces to the waters around the Korean peninsula and conducted war games of various names to bring the DPRK to its knees by "force." This is a repetition of what Johnson did and will cut no ice with the DRPK.

Another lesson that Trump should learn is that the DPRK is immune to the big countries' interference and pressure.

During the Pueblo incident Johnson also asked the big countries that could exert influence on the DPRK to bring pressure to bear upon the leadership of the country. The leadership of the former Soviet Union accepted the US request, and advised the DPRK that it would be better to release the ship, lest it suffer damage for keeping the ship.

But the DPRK maintained its resolute stand that the crew of the Pueblo would not be released before the US submitted a letter of apology and that even though the US submitted a letter of apology, the ship Pueblo would not be returned as it is its war trophy.

Now Trump is enlisting the big countries neighbouring the DPRK in bringing pressure to bear upon the country, but it remains unperturbed and follows the road of its own choice on its own terms.

At the time of the Pueblo incident the DPRK was a non-nuclear state. But now it is a world-class nuclear power which possesses not only A-bomb but even H-bomb and ICBM.

If Trump wants to fight with this country, he should be determined to accept a result worse than that of the Pueblo incident. In other words, he should know that Johnson's administration submitted a letter of apology, but this time there may remain no one who will sign the surrender document to the government of the DPRK.