On the news tonight was a rather trenchant analysis, as regarding North Korea, and how to deal with it.
To paraphrase:
We are currently applying some pressure to China (North Korea's benefactor), in the hope that they will, in turn, apply pressure to North Korea; and that this will result in North Korea's ending its nuclear program.
But that is Plan A.
One would very much hope that it works.
But what if it does not work?
Then we must go to Plan B.
But what, exactly, is Plan B?
Is it (1) to do nothing--as successive administrations (both Democratic and Republican) have done for many years now?
Or is it (2) to strike North Korea, pre-emptively?
Those are really the only two remaining options.
And neither is very palatable.
If we do nothing, North Korea will surely have a nuclear bomb--and have it miniaturized, and be able to place it upon a missile--within the next four or five years, anyway. And Kim Jong-un will certainly have no compunction about using it.
On the other hand, it we strike Pyongyang--which is very tempting--we risk the possibility (make that the probability--the very high probability) that over 100,000 South Koreans will die, almost instantly, in retaliation.
And many Japanese--also within range of Little Kim's nukes--probably will also die.
To say that this is an unhappy choice is to engage in grave understatement.
And that is doubtless why every president, so far, has simply ignored the problem.
But it will not be subject to our merely ignoring it for much longer.
So we must now make the very hard choice: Do we prefer Plan B, Option 1, or Plan B, Option 2 (with all of its attendant ramifications)?
Again, it simply cannot be ignored for much longer.