Let us honestly admit it. Despite the blistering rhetoric of President Trump, there are no good options to resolve the North Korean crisis. Even the traditional hawks who do not see any war they do not like this time are of the same opinion.
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Let us honestly admit it. Despite the blistering rhetoric of President Trump, there are no good options to resolve the North Korean crisis. Even the traditional hawks who do not see any war they do not like this time are of the same opinion.
Moreover, even the hawk-in-chief, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, has said that such a war would be “catastrophic.… A conflict in North Korea… would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”
The most detailed analysis of all possible scenarios ranging from a “crushing U. S. military strike to eliminate Pyongyang’s arsenals of mass destruction, take out its leadership, and destroy its military” to “removing chairman Kim Jong-Un and his inner circle, most likely by assassination,” is provided by Mark Bowden in The Atlantic. His conclusion: All these options not only will carry huge human and material costs, but their end results will turn both the regional and the global situation from bad to worse.
Gregory Treverton, the former chair of the U. S. National Intelligence Council, agrees that “military options against the North’s nuclear arsenal suffer from two problems: they might not succeed, and Pyongyang has devastating retaliatory options.”
A former FBI agent, Eric O’Neil, who helped to capture the spy Robert Hanssen, adds the danger of North Korea’s advanced abilities in cyberattack operations to disrupt its enemies. He mentions several spectacular operations by the North Korean spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, including the global WannaCry ransomware attack from earlier this year.
One can continue with similar quotations, but the main question remains: What to do?
The most obvious answer is to follow Mr.
