Thinking About Nuclear War With North Korea

Graham Allison, New York Times: Thinking the Unthinkable With North Korea

President Trump has promised the world that he will “solve” the North Korean nuclear crisis before the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, can screw a nuclear weapon onto a missile that can reach San Francisco or Los Angeles, a grim feat that experts say he is on track to achieve during Mr. Trump’s first term. The president is right to point out that his predecessors succeeded only at kicking this problem down the road. But Mr. Trump hasn’t said how he plans to solve the problem.

History suggests that as Mr. Trump comes to understand the risks involved, he will settle for constraints on North Korean testing to stop it from being able to reach the American homeland with a nuclear-tipped missile. President Xi Jinping of China pointed him in that direction at the Mar-a-Lago summit meeting in April, proposing a freeze on United States military activity on the Korean Peninsula in exchange for suspending North Korea’s long-range missile tests.

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WNU Editor: For as long as I can remember .... talk about war with North Korea has made the rounds among pundits and those who follow North Korea very closely. But this talk has shifted in the past few years .... from examining the nuclear capabilities of North Korea, to assessing its ability to launch a nuclear strike on South Korea or Japan .... to now having the capability to launch a strike against the U.S.. I can only imagine what the next round of discussions are going to be focused on.