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An F-16 fighter jet takes off at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek

For more than two months, and for as long as half a year, the specter of a military attack on North Korea has loomed over the Korean Peninsula. Fortunately, several reports have said that the administration of US President Donald Trump has ruled out a preemptive strike in its ongoing review of North Korean policy. That ghastly specter will soon fade away, as if it had never been there at all.

There is a conceptual difference between a preemptive strike, which is launched when there are indications that North Korea is about to attack with a nuclear weapon or missile, and a preventive strike, which is designed to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities. Since the two concepts are conflated so much, it’s better just to lump them together under the rubric of a military strike.

To be sure, there were concerns from the very beginning that Trump might carry out a military strike on North Korea. Those concerns are rooted in Trump’s unpredictability. Seeing Trump undermining the “one China” policy that has been an unwritten rule in US-China relations with his phone call to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was likely to make anyone think that he could adopt extreme policies.

On top of that, seemingly irrational aides like Chief White House Strategist Stephen Bannon are positioned in the White House and even been involved in foreign policy strategy. It’s only natural for outsiders to observe the chaos that swept the US because of the anti-immigration executive order that temporarily banned the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US and to project this chaos onto US foreign policy.

There was quite a buzz about the possibility of a military strike on North Korea after Pyongyang launched a mid-range ballistic missile on Feb. 12. As the Trump administration began establishing its North Korea policy, remarks about keeping “all options” on the table were taken to mean the doctrine of a preemptive strike.

But it’s one thing to be open to considering all options and something else to seriously consider a particular option as a feasible policy. Before an option can become policy, it’s necessary to factor in its cost, as well as its effectiveness once implemented. If a military strike had really been given serious and profound consideration, it would never have been leaked to the media – it would have been a top-secret military operation.

To put it somewhat crudely, North Korea experts in Washington snorted at the thought of the Trump administration launching a military strike on North Korea. As some experts sarcastically said, the South Korean news media would have you think that war was going to break out at any minute. Some were even worried that South Koreans might actually prefer a preemptive strike. Even the experts in Washington who are commonly referred to as hardliners on North Korea were very cautious about talking about a military strike on North Korea. After all, they know the high likelihood of this escalating into all-out war on the Korean Peninsula.

The strategists who do mention a military strike on North Korea are mostly aiming their remarks at China. China’s greatest fear is chaos and war on the Korean Peninsula. These remarks constitute pressure on China to cut off its lifeline to North Korea unless it wants war on the Korean Peninsula. But both China and North Korea are well-aware of this tactic. Talk of a military strike is most disturbing not to China or North Korea, but to the South Korean public.

For a military strike doctrine to work on China or North Korea, the US would have to put on a convincing act that it really intended to make a military strike. But that too would be fraught with immense risk. If the families of American military personnel and other American citizens in South Korea were evacuated to Japan, North Korea would believe that a military attack was imminent. No one could predict whether the North Korean leadership would be hidden underground or whether the North would strike the South first. That would be gambling with the fate of the Korean Peninsula.

The fuss over the military strike was concocted by certain high-ranking government officials, certain experts in the US and the South Korean media. I hope this wasn’t the case, but if this was all politically motivated, the people behind it are truly evil. They need to wake up – war is not a joke.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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