AUBURN — Drawing parallels to the “miscalculations and misunderstandings” that started World War I, U.S. Sen. Angus King on Wednesday morning expressed concern about the “exceedingly dangerous situation” with North Korea.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it doesn’t stop its threats against the U.S.

Asked about North Korea while in Auburn to announce his support for a federal paid leave act, King said probably the most important book he’d ever read was “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman.

“It’s a detailed account of the beginning of World War I, and one of the conclusions from the book is that nobody knew how that war started,” said King, an independent who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It was a series of miscalculations and misunderstandings that lead to, at that time, the greatest conflagration the world had ever seen. Millions of people died, it was just awful.

“That’s what worries me about the current situation,” he said. “Frankly, I’m concerned about the president’s rhetoric. You’re dealing with a (North Korean) regime that is paranoid. They constantly believe they are about to be invaded, and part of their governing strategy is to have an enemy, and to work their people up to a state of anxiety that they’re likely to be attacked. Feeding that paranoia strikes me as not a positive way to defuse a dangerous situation.”

King, who last year visited South Korea and stepped into the Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, said the danger faced by Seoul, a city of 25 million people only 35 miles from the DMZ, was on his mind.

“A military strike, number one, would be very unlikely to totally eliminate the nuclear threat (and), number two, would almost certainly result in a catastrophe in Seoul,” said King.

North Korea, he said, is looking at history, too.

“There are three countries over the last 15 years that have given up their nuclear weapons: Saddam Hussein in Iraq; he’s dead. Gaddafi in Libya, he’s dead. And Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons and they were invaded,” he said. “The North Korean regime uses nuclear weapons as a deterrent. The problem is they look at the experience of the last 15 years and say, ‘Look what happen to the people that gave up their nuclear weapons.'”

He hoped dialing back rhetoric, quiet diplomacy and China’s influence would lead to a way out of the situation.

“You don’t conduct diplomacy by tweet; it’s too abrupt,” King said. “It’s too prone to misunderstanding or misinterpretation, and most wars start because of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. This is an exceedingly dangerous situation. In my view, it doesn’t need to be conducted in public. We don’t need to be making threats, particularly if the threats result in some escalation on the other side and then all of a sudden we’re into a conflict, which would be devastating, certainly to South Korea. Don’t forget we have 30,000 of our own American troops in South Korea who are definitely in harm’s way.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

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