When Historians Provide Bad Policy Ideas
By I’m all for historians entering public debates. I am less enthused when they advocate utterly terrible ideas in major publications, such as University of Texas historian Jeremi Suri, who calls for the United States to bomb North Korea.
Hard to see what could go wrong in that scenario!! Love this paragraph as well:
China’s role in a potential war on the Korean Peninsula is hard to predict. Beijing will continue to worry about the United States extending its influence up to the Chinese border. If armed hostilities erupt, President Obama should be prepared for direct and close consultations with Chinese leaders to negotiate a postwar settlement, in a larger multinational framework, that respects Beijing’s legitimate security interests in North Korea. The United States has no interest in occupying North Korea. The Chinese are unlikely to pursue an occupation of their own.
China’s role in a potential war on the Korean Peninsula is hard to predict. Well then. Might as well just bomb North Korea and see what happens!
Jeremi Suri is the kind of historian that Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney could love.