The good news is that there is broad opposition to starting a war with North Korea.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has conducted a survey of American public opinion on foreign policy, and it has reported the results on issues related to North Korea here. There were several interesting findings, but the ones that grabbed my attention were the responses to questions about what the U. S. should do in the event that North Korea doesn’t denuclearize.
When asked whether they supported or opposed various U. S. actions in response to North Korea’s refusal to give up nuclear weapons, 83% of respondents oppose accepting that North Korea will possess and build more nuclear weapons, and 66% oppose accepting that North Korea will possess the weapons it has as long as it agreed not to build more. Opposition to accepting North Korea as a nuclear-weapons state is most intense among Republicans and weaker among Democrats and independents, but it is the broad majority position for all three groups. Opposition to accepting that North Korea will retain its nuclear arsenal seems unusually high, but more than a decade of threat inflation has apparently made the manageable threat from North Korea’s arsenal seem intolerable to most of the public.
