America is a war junkie. Not content with merely incinerating the Middle East, the United States government now has North Korea in its cross-hairs. The Trump administration, with the full and bipartisan support of America’s political and media establishment, is marching headfirst into starting a major war in East Asia.

There exists a near-consensus among American policymakers and talking heads that the North Korean government is:

1. Crazy and irrational, and

2. Unwilling to negotiate with regards to its nuclear program

Both statements are wrong.

Nobody denies that North Korea is a terrible place with a terrible government. Its human rights record is beyond atrocious. North Korea brutalizes its own people and others on a constant basis, as evidenced by the recent and tragic Otto Warmbier affair. It is also true that North Korea does pose a threat to regional stability and security. Flinging missiles over Japan on a regular basis is a big no-no for any country. Sad!

Sure, North Korea’s government is brutal and ghoulish. It may even be the worst country in the world (Saudi Arabia wins that award in my opinion; that being said, North Korea is definitely up there

). But the argument that North Korea is “crazy” evaporates when one looks at the history of US-Korean relations.

Everyone knows that North Korea invaded the South in 1950. The United States and NATO, under UN auspices, pushed the North Koreans nearly all the way up to the Korean-Chinese border on the Yalu River. Chairman Mao in China didn’t like this very much and joined the conflict on the side of the North, pushing the Americans back to the 38th parallel where the conflict stalled for the next three years.

What virtually nobody in America knows- and what nearly everyone in North Korea knows- is that the United States visited a holocaust against Korea back in the early 1950s.

During the Korean War, the United States dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm (a gasoline byproduct that incinerates human flesh on contact), on the Korean peninsula. By comparison, the United States dropped "only" 503,000 tons of bombs during the entire Pacific campaign during World War II.

You read that correctly: The United States dropped more bombs on Korea during the Korean War than on Imperial Japan during World War II.

The human consequences of such a bombardment were bluntly laid out by General Curtis LeMay, head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command during the Korean War and architect of American firebombing campaigns against the Japanese mainland in 1944-1945 that purposefully burnt entire (wooden) Japanese cities to the ground and roasted countless Japanese civilians alive. To quote General LeMay: "We eventually burnt down every town in North Korea."

Every. Town.

LeMay continues: "Over a period of three years or so, we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population of Korea."

20 Percent.

The United States killed 20% of Korea’s entire population during the Korean War.

Nazi Germany killed 20% of Poland’s population during World War II.

Imagine if one of the countries the United States attacked (Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Panama, uhh… basically every country) decided to bomb the United States, burning down every town in the United States and killing 20% of the total United States population.

That would be the ENTIRE POPULATIONS

of South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Utah, Mississippi, Arkansas, Nevada, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming COMBINED.

None of this excuses the actions of the North Korean government and the Kims. If the United States suffered the same scale and type of violence the Korean peninsula suffered back in the 1950s, the United States and its government would almost certainly be just like the North Korea and its government now. Maybe worse.

The North Korean government. Terrible? Yes, maybe even evil. But crazy and irrational? No. Why wouldn’t North Korea want a nuclear deterrent? Look at what the United States did in the past and has done since: always leaving military action "on the table" and under the George W. Bush administration, even putting North Korea on the "Axis of Evil" list, next in line for U.S. invasion.

Given this context, North Korea wanting a nuclear deterrent is less crazy than is often portrayed and may even be understandable. That being said, it is still wrong. Nuclear weapons are bad. Period. North Korea having nuclear weapons is bad. The United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Israel, India, and Pakistan having nuclear weapons is bad too.

There have been attempts to solve the North Korean nuclear problem. In 1994, the United States under President Bill Clinton reached an agreement, boringly called the "Agreed Framework," with North Korea. North Korea would terminate its nuclear program and cease plutonium production, and the United States would try and develop better relations with the North. It worked! Both North Korea and the United States (for once) kept to the agreement. Crooked Bill and Hillary's reign at the White House was terrible for other reasons, but their North Korea policy was actually OK. If the Clintons' policy was continued, North Korea would not have any nuclear weapons today.

Enter George W. Bush. After 9/11, Dubya started pursuing an even more bomb-happy foreign policy than usual. Bush tore up the Agreed Framework that Clinton negotiated, and made North Korea a member of his "Axis Of Evil." After the United States destroyed Iraq, the other two members of the trifecta (Iran and North Korea) rightly began worrying that they were next. In response to American provocation, the North restarted their nuclear program. In 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.

Ignorant of this history (and basically everything else), President Trump has been ramping up the pressure on North Korea in recent weeks. After blaming China for failing to "reel in" the North Koreans, Trump is now threatening a "very severe" response to North Korea’s missile test. This would be a disaster of world-historic – indeed yuge – proportions. An American attack on North Korea could lead to Kim Jong-un ordering the Korean People's Army to attack South Korea (and maybe Japan) in response. South Korea’s capital and largest city, Seoul, lies just 30 minutes south of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and would bear the brunt of the damage caused by renewed hostilities between the two Koreas. Nuclear weapons could be used, and China could get involved. The end-result of such a conflict is too horrific to even contemplate.

Diplomacy is the only solution to the North Korean crisis. The United States government should abandon all current threats against North Korea and revert back to the '90s Clinton-era policy of cautious engagement with North Korea. Reasonable proposals to deal with the North Korea’s nukes have been proposed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and even the failing New York Times Editorial Board. South Korea's recently-elected President Moon Jae-in supports negotiations with the North on this basis, and was elected in large part because of his stated desire to thaw tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The only way to eliminate the North Korean nuclear threat and facilitate the denuclearization of North Korea is for the United States to stop threatening war and aggression, and instead pursue a policy of peace and negotiations.