North Korea underlined its threat to America by choosing July 4 to launch its first intercontinental missile, and followed it with another launch into Japanese waters. We had hoped China might intervene, but its continued support of North Korea showed how unrealistic that was. China regards…
North Korea underlined its threat to America by choosing July 4 to launch its first intercontinental missile, and followed it with another launch into Japanese waters. We had hoped China might intervene, but its continued support of North Korea showed how unrealistic that was. China regards the Kim Jong Un regime as a useful a pawn for breaking the U. S-South Korea-Japan alliance.
So some U. S. response is called for. But what? An attack on North Korea’s nuclear program would start an offensive war for which we have no plans and no objectives. Since economic relations with China are mutually beneficial, commercial sanctions on China are a double-edged sword. We should do something, but by highlighting our frustration U. S. officials have reassured China and North Korea that their plans are on track.
Instead, President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis could have issued one sentence: “From this day on, it is the policy of the Untied States to protect against any and all ballistic missiles coming from anywhere.” Presuming they meant it, that would have shown China’s support of North Korea to have been counterproductive. It would increase America’s security, and strengthen our alliance with South Korea and Japan.
This would represent a change because today, and since the late 1960s, the policy of the United States has been not to defend against ballistic missiles coming from Russia or China. President George W. Bush’s much ballyhooed 2002 withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty masked the reality that the U. S. government has chosen to divide antimissile programs into the artificial categories of “theater defenses” — carefully designed not to interfere with Chinese or Russian missiles – and “national defenses, ” carefully designed to be inefficient and un-expandable, respectively.
