There are no good options for the U.S. regarding North Korea.

Trade and other sanctions won’t work unless China, North Korea’s sponsor state, clamps down. To this point, it has not. 

Diplomacy has been tried for decades. It has failed. U.N. resolutions against North Korea cause that nation’s leaders to laugh, not tremble.

Verbal threats don’t work. Do a Web search using these terms: “John Kerry” and “North Korea.” You will find a cascade of stories about the former Secretary of State warning, cajoling, and criticizing North Korea. He was stern, angry, conciliatory, earnest, depending on the month. 

His deep-voiced threats accomplished nothing.

North Korea cares nothing for the opinions of the world because its leaders care nothing for their own people. They govern in a cocoon of isolation from accountability to their miserable countrymen. They run the government and the military as one big happy Mafia family, only with more extensive and constant brutality.

The Nuclear Threat

Kim might be seeking security or international esteem or something else. A whole industry full of academics, current and former State and Defense Department officials, military leaders, and youthful CNN “experts” has arisen to determine why the North Korean behaves so irrationally.

For example, a woman named Melissa Hanham of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies “studies detailed imagery for clues about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.” There undoubtedly is merit in this effort.  Anything we can glean about these programs is helpful.

But don’t we know enough?

We know North Korea is developing nuclear technology. It plans to place nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles. And they intend to use those ICBMs against us.

ICBMs can also be armed with biological and chemical agents that can cause mass death of a very gruesome kind. Kim has significant stockpiles of each.

Think it’s all a bluff? The premier North Korean newspaper (like all things North Korean, it’s state-run), reported Sunday:

Mass rallies took place in cities and counties of the DPRK to mark the day of struggle against U.S. imperialism …. (Speakers) expressed the will to mercilessly wipe out the U.S. imperialist ogres and class enemies who cruelly killed many civilians in the war. They also evinced their resolve to conclude the standoff with the U.S. victoriously and glorify heroic Korea’s history and tradition of victory.

No, the North Korean government isn’t writing comic opera.

There is no good option for dealing with North Korea. But there might be a necessary course of action.

If U.S. Attacks, Thousands Will Die Before Victory

American Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley gave a measured but very firm speech in that body on July 5th. She noted that our country will not conduct business as usual with our trading partners that continue to pursue trade deals with North Korea. But she put the use of military force before the world in convincing terms.

No one questions that America has the capacity to destroy North Korea’s ability to wage war, conventional and nuclear. To list our publicly known military assets is unnecessary. It’s enough to say we could, with great rapidity and efficiency, devastate North Korea’s military bases, installations, research centers, and so on.

Yet there likely would be grave consequences to thousands of innocent people. “A pre-emptive American attack would very likely fail to wipe out North Korea’s arsenal,” writes Makoto Rich in the New York Times, “because some of the North’s facilities are deep in mountain caves or underground and many of its missiles are hidden on mobile launchers.”

Rich’s article is a detailed evaluation of the North’s arsenal and its potential to unleash massive destruction against Seoul, only 30 miles from the notorious “Demilitarized Zone.”  Then there is the North’s known collection of chemical and biological weapons.

In the event of an American attack, “North Korea knows it is the end game and will not go down without a fight,” notes the RAND Corporation’s Jeffrey W. Hornung. 

It is, of course, a game North Korea would lose. Decisively, and in a matter of days. But probably only after it has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of South Koreans.

Yet a North Korea with ICBMs is an existential threat to the United States. It is a threat we must prevent, without qualification. 

China Must Act. We Must Pray

There is no point in assuring the world we will use military force if we don’t mean it. Unlike its predecessors, this administration seems to mean it. This is a grim reality that Kim Jong Un and anyone with the courage to tell him the truth should begin to consider.

At the direction of President Trump, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has prepared “a range of options, including a military option which nobody wants to take.”

“The world is on notice,” Ambassador Haley told the U.N. this week. “If we act together, we can still prevent a catastrophe and rid the world of a great threat. If we fail to act in a serious way, there will be a different response.”

China must reign-in its disturbed client state. North Korea’s enablers — its trading partners — must quit trading with the North. 

We need to pray for President Trump, those advising him, and for Kim Jong Un and those surrounding him. And for the leaders of China, who hold cards with the North it is past time to play.    

Great tragedy could ensue in the days ahead. May God, in His mercy, bring about a just and peaceful end to this cauldron of potential death.