A pithy summation of our dilemma about Korea. The risks of nuclear retaliation by Korea of any strike make a military solution very, very dangerous indeed. If president Trump's diplomatic initiative in which he has enlisted China fails, we are in a very bad situation indeed. The problem is, China and North Korea have played this game before in which North Korea as one member of the tagteam acts out permitting China to extract trade concessions from us in exchange for bringing pressure on North Korea.
In a proliferated world, no one completely rules the roost, not even Russia or China working in concert. The joker is wild.
Yet an autocratic country has a decided advantage in a nuclear standoff situation. The democratic countries, as we so dramatically saw in the Reagan era when he proposed installing missiles in Europe causing millions of protesters to erupt into the streets, are vulnerable to a burgeoning leftist mentality which will scream for surrender. This is why a nuclear Iran is so dangerous, because a few atomic explosions from an identified source in American or European cities might well bring about surrender to sharia. Certainly, the threat of nuclear war with either Russia or China, puts us in an unequal contest in which our domestic politics pushes for surrender while autocrats carry on free, or largely free, of public opinion.
