Trump’s Threat of War With North Korea May Sound Scarier Than It Is American anxiety over North Korea spiked on Tuesday when President Trump warned that, if the country makes any more threats against the United States, it “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Social media filled with nervous jokes and at times outright panic over whether Mr. Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, could bluster their way into unintended nuclear war. Current American action, or lack thereof, sends a message of calm and caution, rather than “fire and fury.” States have a hard time reading one another’s internal politics, so they tend to rely heavily on reading one another’s actions for clues as to their intentions. And while Mr. Trump’s comment hint at an appetite for war, the institutions that carry out American foreign policy — particularly the military — have behaved conservatively, giving the world ample reason to dismiss his statement.
