Imagine this situation: The United States faces a hostile and possibly deranged dictator ruling an Asian communist state tightly closed off from the outside world. He has developed nuclear weapons…
Imagine this situation: The United States faces a hostile and possibly deranged dictator ruling an Asian communist state tightly closed off from the outside world. He has developed nuclear weapons and is on the way to building missiles capable of carrying those devices across the Pacific Ocean and vaporizing American cities. What can we do?
I’m reminded of the story about the pastor who was asked whether he believed in full-immersion baptism. “Believe in it?” he exclaimed. “I’ve seen it done!” We know how to deal with the threat posed by North Korea because we’ve encountered it before.
In the 1960s, when Chinese tyrant Mao Zedong was striving to build nuclear weapons, he inspired great anxiety in the United States. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson considered launching an attack to prevent it, before deciding not to. When China advanced to building ICBMs, Johnson deployed an anti-ballistic missile system to intercept them in flight. A few years later, however, it was dismantled.
And guess what. The Chinese never carried out an attack. Launching their nukes against us would have guaranteed their destruction. They soon figured out, if they didn’t know before, that the sole value of these weapons was to deter adversaries. Nobody in the U. S. worries much about Chinese missiles anymore.
Some people, possibly including members of Donald Trump’s administration, think we can’t count on being able to deter North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, because he is callow, unpredictable and bellicose. But Mao seemed even more reckless. “I’m not afraid of nuclear war, ” he said in 1957.
