Executive Director John Tierney spoke to BBC Brazil about his concerns about the process of achieving peace on the Korean peninsula.
The possibility of an apocalyptic scenario came not only from the general public, but from experts such as John Tierney, a former US Congressman for the Democratic Party and current executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, an organization based in Washington that monitors the arms race and nuclear world.
The concern, Tierney tells BBC Brazil, was with the potential of a careless or harder gesture on the part of Trump that would make Kim Jong-un understand that his regime was under imminent threat of attack. According to him, there was also the chance of some unthinking reaction from the American leader to the provocations of Pyongyang. “In any of these scenarios, there seemed to be a real risk that either side would initiate military action that, even limited, would escalate.”
…
“There is no confirmation that they have a miniaturized warhead or a fully functional ICBM (Ballistic Missile),” Tierney notes. But even if it’s just more propaganda, the idea seems to have been absorbed by the North Korean establishment, giving Kim some time to focus on economic expansion.
…
“Perhaps a positive thing, if a (Korea) agreement is reached, it may be that in this divided nation a peace agreement will have wider acceptance, constraining the far right as it did during Nixon’s visit to China,” Tierney evaluates. Read more (link in Portuguese; text here is translated)