According to Josh Marshall, my saying that the administration’s relative silence on North Korea may be part of a conscious hawkish policy simply twists the administration’s confusion into something that seems more well thought out than it is. Marshall notes that the manifest infighting between administration hawks and doves shows that our relative silence is really confusion and paralysis. It’s true that the administration is internally divided on North Korea. But that is something I noted in “The Other Imminent Danger.” Certainly, that internal division is part of the reason it’s been tough to read our policy. Yet the administration’s internal policy divisions don’t change the fact that the influence of the hawks would tend to push the administration toward relative silence and obfuscation on this issue. Surely that has played a role in the president’s efforts to play down the conflict.