OPINION | Only a unified international front can deter a North Korean state. Why is the United States having so much trouble leading?
After North Korea’s July 4 missile test, time is running out for the international community, led by the United States, to respond to an increasingly belligerent rogue state.
In a column for The Hill published just before the November 2016 election, “ North Korea grows nuclear program at expense of US security, ” I concluded with this chilling assessment of the situation in North Korea:
Now that our next president is in office he is faced with a major challenge and still has only a limited number of poor options. Some of these options include: Do nothing; appeasement; military intervention; and diplomatic action.
To do nothing would effectively embolden North Korea to continue on their current path of escalating belligerence and growing strategic military power. This course could also telegraph a message of encouragement to other state and non-state actors that they can act with impunity against the interests of the United States.
Secondly, history sometimes rhymes, and an appeasement strategy has often failed. Historian Barbara W. Tuchman observed in “ The Guns of August, ” her Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the beginning of World War I: “Meanwhile the Liberals had been elected. Traditionally opposed to war and foreign adventure, they were confident that good intentions could keep the peace.” Twenty-four years of modern appeasement in an effort to stop North Korea’s march toward becoming a nuclear power have only served to remind the world of then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s complete failure with his own policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler.
President Clinton’s “ Agreed Framework ” policy to provide oil in exchange for North Korea’s suspension of their nuclear weapons program broke down after Pyongyang’s failure to give up their uranium enrichment program. President Bush’s “ Six Party Talks ” was another attempt to exchange fuel and food for North Korea’s pledge to shut down their nuclear reactors but broke down after a few years of negotiations failed to slow down North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile delivery program.
