FROM LEMAY TO MCMASTER: THE PENTAGON’S DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP WITH DETERRENCE

Source Link

JOSHUA POLLACK

In some of the more memorable remarks of his tenure as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster has ruled out the idea of keeping Kim Jong Un in check through nuclear deterrence. In August, he rhetorically asked, “the classical deterrence theory, how does that apply to a regime like the regime in North Korea?”

If there were any doubt about the answer, McMaster declared in October that the president is “not going to accept this regime threatening the United States with nuclear weapons. There are those who would say, well, why not accept and deter. Well, accept and deter is unacceptable.”