{"id":12199,"date":"2017-10-06T12:04:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T01:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/?p=12199"},"modified":"2017-10-08T21:22:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T10:22:51","slug":"need-to-cool-the-rhetoric-on-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/?p=12199","title":{"rendered":"Cool the rhetoric on North Korea."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_12200\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12200\" style=\"width: 340px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/?attachment_id=12200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12200 noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-12200 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/photo-nuclear.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"272\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/photo-nuclear.jpg 340w, https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/photo-nuclear-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12200\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">US nuclear weapons test in Nevada in 1953. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. flickr cc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h1><strong>Brian Johnstone CSsR<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>US President Trump\u2019s threat to \u201ctotally destroy\u201d North Korea can be taken to mean totally destroy the North Korean government, writes Greg Sheridan in the<em> Australian<\/em> on 21 September. Is this what Trump really meant? How could a nuclear attack be so precisely targeted that it would destroy only the North Korean government, and not kill thousands or probably millions of innocent people? The great majority of the people of North Korea are, of course, innocent.<\/p>\n<p>Or does Trump \u2018really mean\u2019 only a limited conventional attack, targeting only government buildings? Hardly. The logic of Nuclear Deterrence policy entails a real intention to use nuclear weapons; a mere bluff will not suffice.<\/p>\n<p>But a real intention to use nuclear weapons, even on the condition that the other party attacks first, is still a real intention. \u201cI intend to kill you if you don\u2019t stop annoying me\u201d is the expression of a real intention. It is a real intention, even if I hope genuinely that you will stop annoying me.<\/p>\n<p>A real intention to act so as to kill millions of innocent people is a morally evil intention. This position was established as long ago as 1988 by the eminent Australian Oxford philosopher John Finnis. It still holds.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s tactics are ethically unsound. As Greg Sheridan himself said on TV, we are going to have to learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea. We have to learn to do that without intending and planning to kill innocent people.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Johnstone CSsR US President Trump\u2019s threat to \u201ctotally destroy\u201d North Korea can be taken to mean totally destroy the North Korean government, writes&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[57,42,58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12226,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12199\/revisions\/12226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialpolicyconnections.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}