Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency in 2017.

I'm Freddie Gray and I'm deputy editor of The Spectator.

I'm joined today by Michael Brendan Docherty, who is a writer at the National Review, and we're going to be talking

about the escalating war of words between Trump and Kim Jong-un. So Michael, the escalating war of words

between Trump and North Korea seems to only get more and more dramatic and terrifying.

How scared do you think we should be?

I don't think we should be scared yet of war between North Korea and the United States.

For the simple reason, and this may sound incredibly basic and naive in a sense, is that

neither country wants a war.

Both countries understand how catastrophic a war on the Korean Peninsula would be,

how quickly it could get out of control, and how quickly it could lead to the use of nuclear

weapons, and none of the U.S. allies in the region like South Korea or Japan would be keen on this and

the US would want to avoid it as well because

you know I some friends in the military tell me that when the US does war games of war in North Korea

you know the simulations you know run a few weeks that when the U.S. does war games of war in North Korea,

you know, the simulations, you know, run a few weeks,

and in the simulations, American troops are marching north through the North Koreans,

and then they just end because the U.S. military has no idea what China would do.

Yes.

Or what Russia would do. I mean, Russia has a major port Vladivostok that is within the region that North Korea is in.

So it's, it would be so perilous that I think both countries will stick to saying insane things.

North Korea's leaders have a history of these insane threats.

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