Retired Gen. Colin Powell is less worried by North Korea’s nuclear program than he is by the surge of populism around the globe he said on Monday. He attributed blame chiefly to the changing nature of media and the growing influence of the Internet.
It the was the first public appearance by Powell, who served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush and as Joint Chiefs chairman under President George H.W. Bush, since his personal emails were leaked by hackers last week. The messages revealed his distaste for the American presidential candidates, whom he said were symptomatic of a phenomenon that concerned him more than North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty.
“For [North Korea] to use nuclear weapons or even suggest they’re going to use nuclear weapons, would be for them to commit suicide,” Powell told a gathering of the International Bar Association in Washington, D.C. “The most important goal they have is to maintain their rather odd regime, with a Kim following another Kim. The quickest way they could lose that is by committing an act which would require us to respond.
“When I was chairman, I had 28,000 nuclear weapons under my supervisory responsibility, and the Soviets had about 28,000,” Powell said. “We both knew that this was unusual … thus the Cold War came to an end.
“So we should not become hysterical every time Kim does something,” Powell added. “They are not crazy. They have one, two, three, four, 10, 20. I had thousands. ”
Powell said the surge in populism brought on by the American election is part of a trend catalyzed around the globe by weak economies and evolving modes of communication, and called it a “pretty unpleasant situation.”
“It’s not just a U.S. phenomenon. As you look at other countries in the world, I can name a number of European countries where populist movements gained energy … from parts of the population that feel disadvantaged,” Powell said.
“These populists tend to be right-wing movements. The same thing has happened here. [Donald] Trump is appealing to a number of Americans who feel they are not sharing in the wealth of the country,” he said. “I don’t think his solutions are going to fix that problem. But he’s gaining energy from that.
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“It’s a strange environment, not just in the United States, but elsewhere in the world where social media and television builds up sort of these reality people into political forces,” Powell added.
On Russia, Powell said he “would not go so far as to say we’re on the edge of a new Cold War. You’ve got to remember the old Cold War. I had 300,00 troops in Germany then along the Iron Curtain, and they had similar numbers.
“The Russia today is not the Soviet Union of 25 years ago. It is a declining nation with respect to its economy, it’s a declining nation with respect to its population,” Powell said.
He added, “They tend to have a very paranoid attitude about just about everything … And so they feel they are the ones being threatened, and no matter what you tell them, they have that in their psyche.”
Turning to the Middle East, Powell said the U.S. should be more cautious when it comes to encouraging regime change.
“Especially in a post-Cold War world … where you have a pressure cooker, where you’ve kept the pressure inside for the last 60 years because of the Cold War strategy,” Powell said. “But suddenly, because of a number of forces at work, economic freedom, the Internet, cell phones, all kinds of ways to tell the world what’s going on everywhere, these pots started to boil.
“All these old problems that never went away, secular, religious, economic … unless you’re prepared to deal with these as well, be careful about going into regime change if you don’t have some sense of where it’s going to end up,” Powell said. “When you take out a regime you become the new regime. So you have to figure out how to pass it on to the people who live there.”
