korea


What do we know about North Korea that we did not already know three or five years ago? The North Koreans have the material, the will, and the expertise to produce nuclear weapons.
These recent tests demonstrate both how serious the North Koreans are and how manifestly unserious the United States remains. Throughout the Clinton, Bush, and now the Obama administrations, we have lived under the delusion that we could negotiate with the North Koreans or the even more absurd notion that we could use China to pressure them. None of this has worked.We are not going to stop North Korea from seeking to produce nuclear weapons unless we do one of two things. First, we could launch a preemptive nuclear strike on their nuclear-weapons facilities and their major cities — so as to both reduce their capability and preempt a lethal conventional counterattack by North Korea on South Korea or Japan.