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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — When Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to force North Korea into negotiations to end the Korean War, he sent a secret message to Pyongyang and Beijing threatening a nuclear strike if they did not come to the table for talks with Seoul. After North Korea in 1968 seized an American Navy intelligence ship off its east coast with 83 crew members aboard, Lyndon B. Johnson called for diplomacy to defuse the crisis, and began 11 months of clandestine talks to seal the deal. Bill Clinton used bland but strong admonitions — backed up by the clear threat of a missile strike — to get Pyongyang to halt its efforts to process plutonium in 1994 and submit to talks on freezing its nuclear program. President Trump’s incendiary remarks on Tuesday, warning of “fire and fury” if North Korea continued threatening the United States, were a jarring hint that he might be willing to discard a decades-old principle against the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. It also broke with a long tradition of American presidents using strongly worded warnings, carefully calibrated threats and urgent — sometimes secret — diplomacy to quell brewing crises with North Korea. “We never threatened — nor would we ever have threatened — to use nuclear weapons,” said William J. Perry, who was sworn in as defense secretary months before Mr. Clinton’s 1994 confrontation with North Korea. “Beyond that, I, and many of my military colleagues, believe that it’s a big mistake to make empty threats. It wea... Link to the full article to read more