North Korea has taken increasingly belligerent steps towards its goal of building a nuclear weapon capable of striking the U. S.
The time for a purely diplomatic solution to North Korea’s increasingly aggressive nuclear program has passed, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Sunday, and time is short for the pressure of international sanctions to truly put the brakes on the regime of Kim Jong Un.
The Japanese prime minister wrote that he “firmly” supports “the United States position that all options are on the table.”
North Korea has taken increasingly belligerent steps towards its goal of building a nuclear weapon capable of striking the U. S. in recent months, launching multiple ballistic missile tests and conducting a test of its most powerful nuclear device to date. Most recently, North Korea fired two test missiles that traveled over Japan.
The most recent tests have indicated that North Korea now possesses a missile capable of striking the continental U. S., although it is not clear that Kim’s regime has yet miniaturized a nuclear warhead to the size necessary to marry it with such a missile. Still, North Korea’s actions have prompted new waves of sanctions from the United Nations Security Council, packages that notably passed with the votes of China and Russia, the two nations whose veto powers often protect the Kim regime.
