After Trump threats, did Kim Jong Un just blink? Or wink?

In other words, he blinked. Or did he?

“No, I don’t think there is any indication at all he blinked,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea expert with the American Enterprise Institute. “This is entirely according to the North Korean playbook.”

Eberstadt, who has been watching North Korea for 30 years, says Kim’s family has a history of making threats that are mostly bluster.

“The first stage is always to make the threat verbally explicit, and to see what they can milk out of that,” Eberstadt said. But he says threats are carried out only when there is little risk to the regime.

“As the drama continues, and at the point where they calculate there will be no seriously adverse blowback, they go ahead and follow through,” Eberstadt said.

The latest crisis was set in motion when President Trump, speaking to reporters on Aug. 8, said “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.

“They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump told reporters during an event at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club.

North Korea announced two days later that it was drawing up plans to fire missiles in the direction of Guam, a U.S. territory with more than 160,000 residents. The threat was very specific, down to the exact number of missiles, their flight path over Japan, the number of seconds they would be in the air and how far away from Guam they would land, all just awaiting the execute order from Kim.

But Kim was clearly bluffing, according to Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies with the Center for National Interest.

“He never blinked because he never intended in the first place to fire any missiles towards Guam. For Kim to actually contemplate firing a missile at Guam is nuts,” Kazianis said.

“If the missile failed, he would look absolutely ridiculous. If the United States shot it down that would also make him look ridiculous. And the third thing, what if that missile accidentally did hit Guam, he would be starting a war,” Kazianis said. “I don’t think Kim had any intention, in any way to either shoot missiles near Guam or attack Guam. It’s just a redirection strategy by Kim.”

Robert Carlin, writing on the 38 North website that analyzes intelligence on North Korea, called it “a familiar North Korean dance move,” a way for Kim to “project the aura of the one still in control … who kept the region from descending into war.”

“The real question, the important question, the one that could be answered was: what were the North Koreans doing from August 9-14 while the US was huffing and puffing over Pyongyang’s threat about Guam?” he wrote.

“The answer, it turns out, was easy: almost nothing. There were rallies in Pyongyang and the provinces. (The two laggards held their rallies yesterday.) There were reports of youths and students rushing to declare their willingness to enlist in the army. But for the rest of the country, the message was that the way to defeat the Americans was: Stay at work! Produce more!”

But not everyone agrees.

It may have been a bluff, but Trump effectively called it, said Ford O’Connell an adjunct professor at The George Washington University.

“We can debate about whether or not he was actually going to do it, but the fact that he had to change course so quickly is a pretty significant event,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell argues it’s not just the tough talk from President Trump, who threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on Pyongyang, but equally strong, if less colorful statements from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who warned Kim to “cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”

Experts say the Trump administration’s threat of military action is aimed not just at North Korea, but is also pressuring China, which does not want a second Korean war fought on its border.

“China does 90 percent of North Korea’s trade, so therefore without having some sort of military strike, [this is] the only way you are going to be able to keep North Korea in check,” O’Connell said.

For the record, North Korea didn’t call off the threatened Guam attack this week, just put it on hold, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. Kim will “watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees,” while warning that “If the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions,” North Korea “will make an important decision.”

Get used to it, says Kazianis, who thinks North Korea has much testing to do before it is confident in its ability to threaten the U.S. with reliable nuclear weapons.

“We’re in store for a lot of years of tensions,” Kazianis said.