Why Only Trump Can Win in North Korea: Time to Think Outside the Box, by Daniel Greenfield.
America is facing the same old bad choices in North Korea.
Either we apply multilateral sanctions hoping that Kim Jong-un, unlike his dad, Saddam Hussein and the Supreme Leader of Iran, will be suitably impressed by having to smuggle his iPhones through three other countries. Or we build a multilateral coalition to take out its military with minimal civilian casualties and then spend the next decade reconstructing and policing it into a proper member of the United Nations.
Is anyone surprised that after Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans have little appetite for either alternative?
How is it possible that we beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in less time than it’s taking us to figure out that we can’t even trust the clods of dirt in Afghanistan? Let alone reach a peace deal with them.
But WW2 was a war. It may have been the last war in which we leveraged all the firepower at our disposal to smash an enemy. We don’t fight wars anymore. Instead we’re the world’s policeman.
The military and the police have very different functions. The military destroys a threat. The police keep order. What we’ve been trying and failing to do in Afghanistan is keep order. It’s what we want to do in North Korea. Get that obnoxious kid next door to stop testing nukes every time he has a bad day. …
The potential danger:
Any hostile country with nuclear weapons is a potential threat. But North Korea has repeatedly threatened to use its nuclear weapons and has exported its technology to Islamic terror states. Even if we could shrug at the former, we can’t afford to ignore the latter.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists is the great threat of this century. Imagine the Islamic terror attacks of the last few years if the Jihadists didn’t have to make do with guns, bombs and cars. If we don’t turn off that pipeline in North Korea, Iran and Pakistan, the day will come when we aren’t watching dozens, hundreds or thousands dying on television in the cities of the West, but millions. …
So what’s new? Maybe Trump.
If there’s any president who can actually break the cycle and replace policing with war, it’s President Trump. Trump is the first president in a long time to express skepticism about international commitments and the global order. And to propose that we serve our own national interests instead of serving the international community. And that is what needs to happen in North Korea. …
The trouble with North Korea isn’t that it’s a “Rogue State”. There’s nothing wrong with being a rogue state. We ought to try being one for a change instead of asking the UN for permission to sneeze. The international community is not the problem with North Korea. Nor is international law the solution.
Once we define the problem, we can define the objective. The problem is that North Korea is a dangerous enemy because of its nuclear program. We have two options. Ignore or act. …
Wars don’t have to be long. They do have to be decisive. Their goal isn’t to reunite a lost sheep in the international community, but to destroy the enemy. Since the Cold War ended, we have not truly contemplated a war of destruction.
hat-tip Scott of the Pacific
