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Overall, all of my sources facts were accurate and regardless of bias they all shared the same information. The key difference between the sources was the way that they interpreted the data. For example, the source that I agreed with, shared the same information however they interpreted the data in a largely different way. The one I agreed with, viewed the move of the ships as a bad move that only could result in war where as the opposing viewpoint was that it was a move that showed Trump as being a strong powerful leader. My views stayed the same throughout the project because regardless of the reasoning to me, I feel that the only thing that can come from Trumps moving of the military forces closer is a bad outcome. My views lean more towards the liberal view in the sense that I feel Trump is provoking violence overseas rather than showing the United States strength. In class discussions I usually took the stance that the government should act with complete transparency because the government should be a reflection of the population and that enables the population to see if that rings true. In terms of media I viewed the media as something that should be used to keep the government in check and should be factual at all times.

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I had a conversation with my friend who typically sides with the conservative viewpoints on most topics. We talked about how Trump was acting as an aggressor by moving the ships towards Asia as well as how he made tweets threatening to end the entire country of North Korea. My friend viewed it more as a service than as a act of war and he claimed that by wiping out North Korea we would be doing a good thing because of the way they are run as a country.

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I picked to write about the North Korea relations because the relationship that we have with other countries plays a large role on our lives, especially with countries that we don't agree with. I don't have much prior knowledge on the topic other than the relations between the countries aren't great.

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In this article written by CNBC, the outlook of the increased tensions doesn't focus on the idea of North Korea and China tensions but the effects of trade with US and China over the issue. It pits China as the middle man and warns the US not to take an aggressive action on trade because that would  only push the Chinese government to side more with North Korea. I noticed a little biased on the idea that the Trump administration is being the aggressor but overall I'd trust the source. I wish they would use more facts and quotes in the article.

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Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Images

Trade tensions between the world's two largest economies are heating up ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing, with the American leader calling the U.S. trade deficit with China "embarrassing" and "horrible" on Wednesday.

The comments follow trade-related disputes in the last week, highlighting friction between the two economic giants as they prepare to go to the negotiating table. There's just one problem: North Korea.

"The key priority for the U.S. is to maintain good economic relations with China since the U.S. wants to strengthen joint co-operation with China to tackle the key geopolitical threat from North Korea's aggressive development of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program," Rajiv Biswas, chief economist for Asia Pacific at IHS Markit, told CNBC.

That is why the U.S. has avoided taking "harsh trade measures" against China, he added.

But there still have been some actions against Asia's largest economy.

Last weekend, the Commerce Department acted on aluminum foil, imposing anti-dumping duties on Chinese imports. Beijing responded swiftly and strongly, saying it was "strongly dissatisfied" with a U.S. decision that was based on a "serious distortion" of facts.

Still, selective duties like that are not the same as "blunt bilateral trade measures that could endanger the overall bilateral geopolitical relationship with China," Biswas added.

The trouble with tariffs

Indeed, punitive action on Chinese imports will complicate trade for the U.S. more than it will for the world's second-largest economy.

In the case of aluminum, "China has already been cutting back on supply in response to trade frictions with other countries as it had a lot of excess capacity for years," said Helen Lau, metals and mining analyst at Argonaut, a broker in Hong Kong.

Now, most production - more than 90 percent - is kept at home for domestic use, she told CNBC. Also weighing on supply are efforts by the Chinese government to cut excess capacity and to clean up air pollution due to the use of coal in metal making.

So the U.S. may institute additional tariffs, but that will do little to dent global market fundamentals for some products like aluminum. Instead, it would actually tighten supply in the U.S. and drive up prices for end-consumers as local products are more expensive - even though the move will achieve its political aim of appeasing domestic suppliers, said Lau.

Against that complex backdrop, both countries are likely to seek a constructive relationship at next week's state visit.

Trump to push for market access

China's state media is playing up Trump's visit positively, noting that the U.S. leader will be the first to visit President Xi Jinping after his re-election to the helm at the recent Communist Party Congress.

The two leaders will "announce significant outcomes" on the trade and economic fronts, reported CGTN, the international arm of China Central Television, quoting the country's ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai.

Rather than punitive measures like broad-based tariffs to curb Chinese imports, the U.S. is more likely to negotiate for better market access to the huge mainland market to narrow the trade deficit, said analysts.

"Practically speaking, the goal for the U.S. side is to improve exports of the U.S. to China rather than necessarily reducing imports from China," said Jian Chang, Barclays chief China economist.

China may already be paving the way for goodwill before Trump lands on its shores: On Thursday, China's Commerce Ministry said the country will lower tariffs and step up bank financing to support more imports and narrow its massive trade surplus, Reuters reported.

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The US wants to notch trade wins against China, but Trump needs Beijing's help with North Korea

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Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Images Trade tensions between the world's two largest economies are heating up ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing, with the American leader calling the U.S. trade deficit with China "embarrassing" and "horrible" on Wednesday.

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This source describes the increased tensions between the United States and North Korea as a dangerous idea that the US isn't fully prepared for. It made Donald Trump look to be the instigator who is try to provoke a nuclear war between the two countries. I found the source to be reliable because the opinion was rather neutral and it gave great support information for the claims that it was making. Another thing I liked about the source was the full spectrum of information that the source gave.

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Trump's threats at UN to destroy North Korea unbound by reality

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Donald Kirk writes that Trump's over-the-top declaration can't hide the fact that military action against the North would be deeply unpopular at home, costly and opposed by North Korea's neighbours

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This source shows the stereotypical liberal view of Trumps move towards North Korea. In the video aspect of things a defector warned the audience that we should be worried because Kim Jong Un is prepared to use nuclear weapons if the United States acts first. I noticed the slight biased but I also still trust the information that it gave because it explained well and was factual information.

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North Korean military officers have been trained to trigger a devastating counterstrike if their country is attacked by the United States, according to a high-profile defector.

Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho's comments to U.S. lawmakers suggest that military action on the Korean peninsula - a course of action repeatedly raised by President Donald Trump - would almost certainly result in a catastrophic number of civilian casualties.

"North Korean officers are trained to press the button without any further instructions from the general command if something happens on their side," Thae said Wednesday. "So if there is any sound of fire or bombs or strikes from Americans, the [North Korean] artillery and short-range missiles will fire against South Korea."

A key U.S. ally, South Korea is home to more than 50 million people. Some 28,000 American troops are stationed in the country. Seoul, its capital, is just 30 miles from the North Korean border and in range of thousands of artillery pieces that are trained on the city.

Thae fled his post as deputy North Korean ambassador in London last year and has spent his time since publicly criticizing the regime from his new home in the South.

In an exclusive interview to NBC News in April, Thae warned that Kim Jong Un was prepared to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. The North Korean dictator has not yet displayed such a capability.

However, North Korea has conducted several ballistic missile tests this year in defiance of U.N. resolutions, including two intercontinental ballistic missile tests that experts said suggest that a missile could reach parts of the United States.

The U.S. and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

On Wednesday, Thae told House Foreign Affairs Committee that the human rights abuses committed by his homeland, which is governed by one of the most repressive states on the planet, were "tantamount to the crimes committed by the Nazis."

Related: Bomb Shelters Are Everywhere in Seoul

Tensions have risen between Kim and the Trump administration, with Washington matching the warlike language of Pyongyang and Kim continuing to ramp up his burgeoning nuclear and missile programs.

Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea and rain "fire" and "fury" on the country of 25 million if its regime continued to threaten the U.S.

"The domestic system of control is weakening as the days go by"

While Thae said that the U.S. should always preserve the threat of war as a last resort, he questioned whether the White House had done enough to solve the crisis by other means.

"We cannot change the policy of terror of the Kim Jong Un regime," he said. "But we can educate North Korean population to stand up by disseminating outside information."

Activists currently smuggle USB sticks and float balloons across the border, with the illicit packages containing everything from anti-North Korea leaflets to Hollywood movies. This gives a glimpse of the outside world to ordinary North Koreans, who are not able to access the internet or foreign media.

"Is the United States really doing enough in this regard?" Thae said of these subversive tactics. "The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to cope with the military threat. Yet how much does the U.S. spend each year on information activities involving North Korea in a year? Unfortunately, it may be tiny fraction."

He said these tactics were already having an effect, helping foment a "flourishing" black market economy and greater knowledge of Western culture.

"The domestic system of control is weakening as the days go by," he said. "These changes ... make it increasingly possible to think about civilian uprising in North Korea."

The U.S. should push Russia and China to impose greater sanctions, Thae said, as well as urging Beijing to stop its policy of repatriating North Korean escapees.

He also suggested that the U.S. should meet the North Korean leader to assess his thinking.

"Some people do not believe in soft power, but only in military options. But it is necessary to reconsider whether we have tried all non-military options before we decide that military action against North Korea is all that is left," he said.

"Before any military action is taken," he added. "I think it is necessary to meet Kim Jong Un at least once to understand his thinking and to try to convince him that he would be destroyed if he continues his current direction."

North Korea has said in public statements that it wants an official end to the Korean War. It also wants nothing short of full normalization of relations with the U.S. and to be treated with respect and as an equal in the global arena.

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N. Korea is ready to 'press the button' if U.S. attacks, defector says

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North Korean military officers have been trained to trigger a devastating counterstrike if their country is attacked by the United States, according to a high-profile defector. Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho's comments to U.S.

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This source was spot on in terms of matching my personal views. I liked the way that the source described both Trump and Kim Jong as people who have played a large role in the increased tensions. Another thing that I liked about the way the article was written was that they brought in an expert to illustrate to the audience all of the possibilities that could happen. I trusted the source because of the unbiased standpoint and the way they mentioned possibilities rather than making big claims.

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Donald Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea with "fire and fury" should it cross some ambiguous tripwire. By being vague about where that tripwire lies, Trump seems to believe that his threat, coupled with harsher economic sanctions, will force Kim Jong Un to back down.

But just the opposite seems to have occurred. Instead, a war of words has broken out between Trump and Kim. This underscores the dangers that arise when there are no clear policy guidelines about what conditions constitute a threat to peace and can lead to war. It also tells us what may happen when each leader plays a "madman strategy" - pretending to be a madman to induce his antagonist to capitulate.

Game theorists such as Thomas Schelling have pointed out that the madman strategy can sometimes get results. It is equivalent to throwing the steering wheel out the window of your car, in sight of your adversary, when playing a game of chicken - showing that you are not going to be able to swerve, so your adversary must do so to avoid a head-on collision. Clearly, chicken is a dangerous game.

[Four paths to a 'strategic miscalculation' over North Korea]

On the one hand, disaster might strike if both players stick with the madman strategy of making irrevocable commitments. The personal invectives and threats that Trump and Kim have hurled at each other might eventually be sufficient to cause one of them to escalate to nuclear war. If their posturing becomes real, this strategy's logic leads to mutual catastrophe.

However, each player fears that it may lose - admittedly, in a less costly way than suffering nuclear attack - if it backs down by stepping away from the nuclear brink, thus undermining its future credibility. Each wants to win the confrontation, forcing the other to lose by backing down. This may end with both players refusing to back down and, consequently, crashing.

So what can be done?

One option is to continue more or less as is, posturing in the hope that it will not lead to nuclear war. A second is to be explicit about what tripwire might lead to a nuclear confrontation. A third is to create an externally observable "bright line" to reassure North Korea, and perhaps other adversaries, that there will be no escalation unless something untoward happens.
Clarity may be more helpful than ambiguity
Trump has been relentlessly ambiguous, sometimes inconsistent, about what might lead him to destroy North Korea. Kim has been inconsistent, too. This could create real problems should tensions continue to rise as a result of their blustering. Even before developing nuclear weapons, North Korea was a provocateur in some nasty military incidents with the United States - but none escalated into a major military confrontation.

[Would Trump attack North Korea? Here's what we learned from his 'Rocket Man' speech at the U.N.]

If North Korea did launch an all-out military offensive, using only conventional weapons, against South Korea and U.S. forces stationed there, the damage inflicted would be horrendous, but relying on U.S. air and naval power would surely enable South Korea to repel such an attack. The problem is that North Korea could unleash its nuclear weapons as a last resort. With that in mind, the United States might preempt this attack by using its own nuclear weapons to limit damage to its own forces.

Alternatively, each side might clarify the conditions that would provoke a nuclear attack, making the tripwire extremely clear. Historically, that approach has undergirded the policy of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, the prevalent nuclear doctrine since the outbreak of the Cold War. Currently, at least one tripwire is clear: The United States has promised massive retaliation should a nuclear attack be detected, even before it hits U.S. territory.

Some analysts claim that MAD prevented nuclear war between the superpowers, although it did not prevent several non-nuclear proxy wars, supported by each side, elsewhere. The fact that none of the seven countries that have acquired nuclear weapons since the 1950s have used them - even between such rivals as India and Pakistan - would seem to validate MAD.

But this is a debatable claim. The world has seen several close calls, involving accidents and last-minute decisions not to launch nuclear weapons. We may just have been lucky so far.
Verifiable information provides an alternative
An alternative might be for the United States to draw a bright line, requiring verifiable information that a nuclear attack has occurred, before nuclear weapons would be used. Such a policy of No First Use, or NFU, of nuclear weapons has long been advocated by many prominent government officials and foreign policy analysts, both during and after the Cold War.

To be sure, this might undermine U.S. ability to respond to an imminent nuclear attack, including from a major power like Russia. But because it can so powerfully strike back, especially from its relatively invulnerable nuclear-armed submarine force, the United States could credibly promise to retaliate, even against a massive first strike, with devastating force.

[5 takeaways from Trump's startling nuclear threats against North Korea]

What's more, North Korea is unlikely to be able to hit the continental United States with nuclear weapons. Sure, it might strike vulnerable targets in South Korea, Japan or the Pacific region - but it would do so knowing it could be utterly destroyed in return. Even if North Korea could penetrate U.S. anti-missile defenses, its leaders would have to fear the incalculable damage and destruction from the U.S. response. It is inconceivable that a North Korean sneak nuclear attack could wipe out the U.S. ability to retaliate.

It's true that a U.S. No First Use policy might send North Korea the wrong signal - letting Kim believe that the U.S. lacks the will to retaliate. Nor would such a policy induce North Korea to relinquish its nuclear weapons, which it claims as a deterrent against a South Korean or U.S. attack on its territory.

On the other hand, a NFU policy might allay North Korea's fear of imminent attack, reassuring Kim that nuclear attack would come only if he struck first. And it might make both sides less likely to rush hastily into a conventional attack that might escalate into nuclear war.

The logic of NFU has been recognized by three nuclear states: China, India, and Israel. Each has indicated, albeit with some qualifications, that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in conflict.

If the United States declared an NFU policy, that might well induce other nuclear states to adopt one as well. Such a domino effect might even persuade North Korea that using nuclear weapons would threaten its very existence. If more and more nuclear states adopted NFU policies, the world might banish the threat of nuclear war, bringing a new global equilibrium.

No First Use won't prevent all conventional wars between states - but those have become fewer and less destructive over the years anyway. (Destructive civil wars are a different story). But now, for the first time, declaring an NFU policy might deter a small hostile country from using nuclear weapons.
Steven J. Brams is professor of politics at New York University and co-author, with D. Marc Kilgour, of "Game Theory and National Security" (Wiley, 1991).

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Analysis | If Trump doesn't want a nuclear war with North Korea, a 'No First Use' pledge might work better than threats

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Donald Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea with "fire and fury" should it cross some ambiguous tripwire. By being vague about where that tripwire lies, Trump seems to believe that his threat, coupled with harsher economic sanctions, will force Kim Jong Un to back down.

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I disagree with this article completely because although Kim Jong has played a significant role in the relations between the two countries, the relations before him weren't good. I think that the goal of the article was to focus on Kim Jong and how he is this awful character rather than to take some accountability for the tensions. I find the source to be credible because the info is true however the info is one sided.

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The portrayals of both North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. president Donald Trump as bombastic egoists reacting emotionally seem to have become hackneyed as tensions continue to rise on the Korean Peninsula. But reducing the sophomoric rhetoric between the two men to mere chauvinistic posturing fails to reveal the genius underlying the Trump administration's pressure campaign.

President Trump's tweets, while drawing the ire of both sides of the aisle, shatter the North Korean image of Kim Jong-un and force him to react from a position of weakness on terms dictated by the United States. To understand why Trump's rhetoric is so effective, one must consider the president's target audience.

Kim Jong-un spent his early life in Switzerland, and was thrust into the spotlight prematurely due both to his father's death and to the various inadequacies and indiscretions rendering his two elder brothers unfit to lead. To compensate for the twentysomething's inexperience and lack of notoriety, North Korean officials began a relentless campaign to create the supreme myth of their new supreme leader. In an effort to reverse the growing resentment towards senior leaders brought on by his father's reclusiveness and the memory of the terrible famine of the 1990s, through which the current generation came of age, Kim Jong-un was modeled as the reincarnation of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

Prior to taking power, the younger Kim attended the Kim Il-sung Military Academy to establish his military bona fides before being commissioned a four-star general and named vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. The myth exaggerated Kim Jong-un's military prowess through the Pyongyang propaganda machine, which has been a continuous font of photos appearing to show him planning military movements, videos in which he is instructing his generals, and fiery statements defending the Korean people against the acrimonious Americans and their South Korean puppet. There are even intimations that the shelling of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island and the sinking of the Republic of Korea Navy vessel Cheonan in 2010 were attributed to Kim as a means of increasing his credibility.

Much like his grandfather, this overweight, jolly and ever-smiling leader frequently appears in public for engagements and meetings with the Korean people, and to personally deliver orders to his military forces in the field-something his father, Kim Jong-il, who is said to have suffered from a severe stutter, rarely did. To further distance himself from the anathema of his father's legacy, the young leader embarked on a savage campaign of over three hundred executions to rid his regime of Kim Jong-il's inner circle. His eradication of senior leaders, while seen from the outside as a sign of paranoia, may have served the greater purpose of separating him from the taciturn and corrupt regime of his father in the minds of the rising generation of North Koreans.

Having been educated in Switzerland, traveled extensively abroad and studied China's rise to prosperity, Kim Jong-un is keenly aware of the precarious summit on which he sits. The North Korean black market consists of a capitalistic network of illicit goods smuggled in from China and other neighboring countries. While smuggling in North Korea is punishable by death, it has been largely ignored by Kim Jong-un's regime. One likely reason for this is Kim's understanding of the necessity to control the transformation of North Korea from a socialist state with a command market to a dictatorial capitalist economy that trades on the global market.

"The success of a transition from a command economy seems to depend on the extent to which individuals in the socialist economy remember the institutional background of its early capitalism," wrote Charles Kindleberger in reference to Poland's transition in his seminal work Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. "Such memory is more important to transitional success than the speed of decontrols and of privatization of state monopolies."

In order for Kim to remain in power, he needs both to foster an underground economy so as to establish a memory of capitalism and to reinforce his command of the military to thwart any would-be mutineers. By conducting more than twenty ballistic-missile launches and two nuclear detonations this year while keeping his military constantly on a wartime footing, Kim sustains his tyrannical control throughout the ranks while appearing to be much the same hawkish defender of the fatherland his grandfather was. By allowing capitalism to survive in the shadows, he maintains control over the gradual ascendance of a centrally managed market economy in the same vein as the pioneer of China's economic awakening, Deng Xiaoping.

What Kim Jong-un needs is time and money.

Revamping North Korea's society and economy while maintaining control over international influence inside the hermit kingdom is a delicate task. Opening China to the global market took Deng Xiaoping eleven years of adroit political maneuvering and significant foreign direct investment by Western corporations to achieve his "Four Modernizations" in the agricultural, industrial, science-and-technology and military sectors.

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The portrayals of both North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. president Donald Trump as bombastic egoists reacting emotionally seem to have become hackneyed as tensions continue to rise on the Korean Peninsula. But reducing the sophomoric rhetoric between the two men to mere chauvinistic posturing fails to reveal the genius underlying the Trump administration's pressure campaign.