Should Washington Strike North Korea's Dangerous ICBMs Before It's Too Late?

[TomSea]

Should Washington Strike North Korea's Dangerous ICBMs Before It's Too Late?
 Daniel R. DePetris
January 7, 2017

Imagine this hypothetical for a moment. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un takes to the Korean Central News Agency and begins his speech with the usual invective and inflammatory rhetoric about how evil and duplicitous the United States is. After about twenty minutes of this, he boldly declares that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has finally completed preparations for launching the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, which is scheduled in one week. After the speech, the U.S. intelligence community comes to the conclusion that Kim is deadly serious about launching the ICBM towards the Pacific. The administration makes the determination that the only way to stop the impending launch is through a U.S. military strike; two days later, U.S. Air Force and Navy assets are ordered to do exactly that.

This scenario may resemble a Hollywood thriller, but a growing number of people in the Washington foreign-policy community are increasingly of the belief that the use of force will likely be the only way the United States and the international community can prevent Pyongyang from further menacing its region and perhaps America’s West Coast. Sen. Lindsey Graham is one of those people. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in December, Graham revealed that he will be introducing an authorization for the use of military force to provide the president with the statutory approval to preemptively stop Pyongyang from finishing the development of its ICBM.

Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell should simply ignore it. And if the GOP brings it up for a floor debate, Senate Democrats should do everything in their power to prevent such a resolution from passing. A preemptive strike on North Korea would be an unmitigated disaster—a military action that is much more likely to escalate into a full-blown regional confrontation with a million-man North Korean army than force Kim to tremble in his basement.

Continued: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/should-washington-strike-north-koreas-dangerous-icbms-before-18975