Washington, D.C. — August 8, 2017 — In response to reports that North Korea may have achieved the capability to miniaturize nuclear weapons and mount them on its missiles, and in response to President Trump’s belligerent threat that more aggression from North Korea will be met with “fire and fury,” Jon Rainwater, Executive Director of Peace Action, released the following statement:
“Yet again, the president is counting on dangerous threats of military force to convince North Korea to back away from its goal of fielding a nuclear arsenal capable of striking the United States.
“The president’s latest threat of ‘fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,’ is clearly a reference to the use of nuclear weapons. That this threat comes between the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki underlines the president’s dangerous lack of appreciation of the horror and evil of nuclear war.
“‘Fire and fury’ isn’t a strategy. Painstaking and sustained diplomacy of the type that led to the Iran deal is the only viable option with North Korea. It won’t be easy but that’s why the U.S. needs to drop its current preconditions for talks and get down to the hard work of hammering out a settlement to this political crisis.”
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Founded in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States’ largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid members and nearly 100 chapters in 36 states, works to abolish nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to international conflicts. The public may learn more and take action at http://www.PeaceAction.org.
