Michael Judge, a former contributing editor at the Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review, said the war of words between Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is so dire that it could culminate in the rogue state launching a devastating attack.
Pearl Harbour still ranks as one of the worst attacks by a foreign country on US soil.
The attack, by Japan, in December 1941, was preempted by a financial freeze ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Mr Judge, an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said in an article for Politico the situation was eerily similar to the UN sanctions imposed on North Korea, which could be set to cripple the country.
And, if lessons are not learnt from the past, it could lead to mass destruction.
Mr Judge writes: “One would hope that the goal in Washington today, as in nearly all diplomacy, is to avoid war — especially one that might include a nuclear exchange.
“And brinkmanship, even the crude ‘fire and fury’ form it has taken under Trump, has worked in the past — think JFK and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
“But if Trump truly believes, as he recently tweeted, that his own secretary of state is ‘wasting his time trying to negotiate’ with Kim, no matter how irrational the young dictator may be, how is a diplomatic solution possible?”
Kim has angered the international community with repeated missile tests.
The North stoked an international reaction after it conducted its sixth nuclear test, which was of a long-range missiles capable of striking the US mainland.
However, Mr Trump has refused to tone down his rhetoric on how he could respond to the country.
He recently said the United States is “totally prepared” to respond to threats from Pyongyang.
He told Fox News: “We’re so prepared like you wouldn’t believe. You would be shocked to see how totally prepared we are if we need to be.”
The US president has in recent months engaged in a fiery verbal tit-for-tat with North Korea’s leader.
Mr Trump went on, appearing to allude to potential conflict and said: “Would it be nice not to do that? The answer is yes. Will that happen? Who knows.”
The DPRK hit back saying: “If Trump thinks that he would bring the DPRK, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation and an expression of ignorance.
“Trump threatened to totally destroy the DPRK… it is an extreme act of threatening to totally destroy the whole world.”
But Mr Judge added that the US and China must pursue a path towards “denuclearisation” as this may be North Korea’s “only acceptable future.”