Propaganda poster in a primary school at the Chongsan-ri Farm, North Korea. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.A pivotal moment in the "war on terror" was George W Bush’s state-of-the-union address to Congress in January 2002. Almost five months after 9/11, and two after the the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was terminated, the United States president here declared the global expansion of this war against an “axis of evil”. The three rogue states to be targeted were Iraq, Iran and North Korea. His graduation address at the West Point military academy in June 2002 made it abundantly clear that the US had every right to pre-empt threats from such regimes (see "Iran, and a diplomacy deficit", 1 September 2017).
Those speeches were infused with the outlook of the neoconservative right, especially the Project for a New American Century. The powerful backing from these quarters which fuelled Bush's victory in 2000 was animated by an outlook almost identical to Trump’s “make America great again”.
Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was overthrown in March 2003. That sent a clear message to Pyongyang, which its current propaganda greatly emphasises: namely, that its own termination is an actual, existential threat. Under Trump, and despite all the American military failures of the past sixteen years, such a prospect is again very much on the agenda.
