A rallying cry for the last good option left in dealing with North Korea.
We’ ve all heard the new mantra in Washington about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, dutifully intoned by every cable news panel of former admirals and ambassadors: “There are no good options.”
Suddenly, our experts are lined up like bobble-head dolls, nodding in agreement about America’s untenable choices, while the DPRK is goosestepping toward a nuclear future unencumbered by any Iranian-style doublespeak about the peaceful uses of atomic power.
North Korea’s ever-advancing nuclear warhead delivery system and Kim Jong Un’s naked threat to use it against American cities on the Pacific Rim is as ominous as it is outrageous, but it’s at least managed to unite Republicans and Democrats for the first time in the Trump administration.
As well it should. Both political parties have been complicit the past twenty years in allowing the US to be diplomatically duped into letting the DPRK cross the “Bridge of No Return, ” which will lead, perhaps within three years, to atomic bomb-tipped ICBMs.
Because of the effete efforts of our negotiators, we’ ve reached a point where even President Trump’s threats of “severe” consequences for the DPRK are transparently empty.
His seasoned and respected defense chief, Gen. James Mattis, will not — despite his “Mad Dog” moniker — suggest any military action that would trigger a conflagration that kills hundreds of thousands on both sides of the Korean peninsula’s demilitarized zone.
There may have been a targeted Israeli-type military response possible fifteen years ago, but not any longer.
There is, however, still one path to a sufficiently rational and predictable North Korea: recognizing the DPRK’s sovereign right to be a nuclear power worthy of direct negotiations with the American government at the highest levels.
On its face, it’s a repulsive idea to most Americans, given the ruthless and capricious brutality of the Kim dynasty, but that’s only because we have short memories.
We forget that the US has been happy to cooperate militarily with Pakistan over the years to protect our interests, even though it’s a rogue nuclear state and a duplicitous safe haven for the very international terrorists we’ re hunting.
We forget about the distasteful pragmatism that began our relationship with nuclear giant China. Mao Zedong’s henchmen are estimated to have killed more than 60 million of his political enemies during the “Cultural Revolution” of the late 1960’s and unquestionably aided North Vietnam in the slaughter of tens of thousands of American troops.
