North Korea: A Missile Test For Trump

The North Korean missile threat is real. It is not like the political wonderland of Russian election plots or the escapism of fake news. It is about San Francisco or LA being wiped off the map on the whim of an unstable regime in a nuclear missile strike. No American President can sit back and, Pearl Harbour style, let it happen in order to obtain a morally justified reason to react. The threat is real but not immediate. Having nuclear bombs and long range missiles is one thing, or rather two things and North Korea has both. Putting one on top of the other, guiding the combination to the target and bringing the warhead back through the re-entry process to explode at ground target zero, are several more things and there is no evidence  that NK has the capability to do any of them. Yet. But soon they will. So Trump cannot hide behind some diplomatic formula. He has to do something.  But What?

Let us look at the military option first. According to this blog’s research the total and complete defeat of North Korea inside a week, if America uses all its available military assets, is a certainty. However during the battle it is likely that NK artillery and rockets could inflict 300,000 civilian deaths on South Korea, before its capability is destroyed. It is also thought that NK has about a dozen operational nuclear bombs. If it could get one or two of those through, maybe on Japan as well, we are looking at millions of casualties. All to put America First. Suddenly the American victory becomes the biggest disaster in the history of warfare.

So let us think out of the box. North Korea and its leadership knows that it will lose any war. What it craves is to be recognised as a power of which note has to be taken. Sanctions are useless and although they have had a crippling effect on the country’s general development and economic progress, they have not diverted the ambition of Kim Jon Un one iota. Reverse them and it is another matter. Offer the lifting of sanctions, a meeting with Trump, a peace treaty with South Korea, economic aid and a coming in from the cold, in return for first a freeze on further development of the nuclear strike programme, followed by the dismantling of it. Then you may very well find you have a buyer, because that is all Kim Jon Un ever wanted.

It could be said that such a deal would be a blow to American pride and resolve. Many a puffed up chest will heave with anger. But if it saves hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives, it will undoubtedly be recalled as the noblest act in the history of America, giving it a status and authority in the world beyond anything it has thus far known.

And if he does not buy? Then at least America can say it tried everything before it pressed the button.