Posted on 04/21/2017 5:31:26 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
The U.S. has ways to shut down Kim Jong-un’s nuclear-missile program short of war.
The crisis with North Korea may appear trumped up. It’s not.
Given that Pyongyang has had nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles for more than a decade, why the panic now? Because North Korea is headed for a nuclear breakout. The regime has openly declared that it is racing to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the United States — and thus destroy an American city at a Kim Jong-un push of a button.
The North Koreans are not bluffing. They’ve made significant progress with solid-fuel rockets, which are more quickly deployable and thus more easily hidden and less subject to detection and preemption.
At the same time, Pyongyang has been steadily adding to its supply of nuclear weapons. Today it has an estimated ten to 16. By 2020, it could very well have a hundred. (For context: The British are thought to have about 200.)
Hence the crisis. We simply cannot concede to Kim Jong-un the capacity to annihilate American cities.
Some will argue for deterrence. If it held off the Russians and the Chinese for all these years, why not the North Koreans? First, because deterrence, even with a rational adversary like the old Soviet Union, is never a sure thing. We came pretty close to nuclear war in October 1962.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Ping.
Since the advent of Trump, Krauthammer has been out of kilter, but, in this article, he makes some good, clear-eyed points.
0bama - you built that!
Trump can legitimately say, with respect to North Korea, thank you WJClinton, GWBush, Obama.
“Krauthammer has been out of kilter, but, in this article, he makes some good, clear-eyed points.”
I’m not so sure. His argument is that somehow China would take control over North Korea but makes no mention of how that would be done. Maybe he thinks North Korea would simply do as China says and somehow surrender and hand over power to them? Easier said than done.
We might, however, try to shoot down a North Korean missile in mid-flight to demonstrate both our capacity to defend ourselves and the futility of a North Korean missile force that can be neutralized technologically.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446921/north-korea-usa-countermeasures
It’s been close to 30 years since Ronnie’s Star Wars with 8 years of that being Clinton’s Peace Dividend, and 8 years of Obama’s termination of the extension of our missile defensive capabilities. Is this really within the realm of physical possibility?
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