8/17/2017

NORTH KOREA/STEVE BANNON: “For all his fire-breathing nationalism — the demands to ban Muslims, build a wall on the Mexican border and honor statues of Confederate heroes — Stephen K. Bannon has played another improbable role in the Trump White House: resident dove…
His views, delivered in a characteristically bomb-throwing style, have antagonized people across the administration, leaving Mr. Bannon isolated and in danger of losing his job. But they are thoroughly in keeping with his nationalist credo, and they have occasionally resonated with the person who matters most: President Trump.
Mr. Bannon’s dovish tendencies spilled into view this week in unguarded comments he made about North Korea to a liberal publication, The American Prospect. Days after Mr. Trump threatened to rain ‘fire and fury’ on the North Korean government if it did not curb its belligerent behavior, Mr. Bannon said, ‘There’s no military solution here; they got us.’…
Mr. Bannon was saying what virtually every military commander believes — that a strike on North Korea would prompt overwhelming retaliation with untenable casualties in one of the world’s largest cities. In this case, though, his comments undercut not only the president, but also decades of American deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.
And that was not all: Mr. Bannon floated an unorthodox proposal for the United States to withdraw its troops from South Korea in return for China’s commitment to get the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to agree to a verifiable freeze in his nuclear and missile programs.”

-Mark Landler, “Bannon’s Dovish Side Emerges as He Contradicts Trump on North Korea,” The New York Times online, Aug. 17, 2017