I’m guessing that many of you may have been prudently counselled not to bring highly contentious political opinions to hyperpolarized Thanksgiving tables this year.
Overall, this was less of an issue in my home. A small gathering of our immediate family shared a wonderful dinner along with broadly compatible libertarian priorities — at least up to a point.
As usual, two general topics dominated our conversations — the world economy and national security. My greatest personal concerns tilt toward the latter. Recognizing that both are highly interdependent and inseparable, they are also quite different.
Issues related to economic health and competitiveness tend to be influenced far more by domestic policies which are best served by reducing federal government interference in free markets. On the other hand, failures to protect citizens from external threats — which is what we must count on government to do – portends devastatingly lethal consequences.
A discussion regarding a looming North Korean nuclear threat to our homeland and allies turned heatedly argumentative. While no one disputed that Kim Jong Un’s rogue regime poses a very dangerous global dilemma, inevitable questions regarding what, if anything can or should be done to resolve it was another matter entirely.
Our family debate struck an impenetrable bedrock stratum layer of disagreement regarding whether or not the Trump administration and cat-herding congressional leaders can continue to allow North Korea to advance capabilities to target the continental U.S. with unimaginable nuclear carnage.Those programs have been progressing far more rapidly and ominously than predicted by most U.S. strategic defense experts.
The hermit kingdom has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006. In July they launched two ICBM tests capable of reaching America, and we now know that they have developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead to go with them.
This means that North Korea is already very close to being able to detonate atomic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) devices over our American mainland which can potentially black-out vast regions of our critical civilian and military electronics infrastructure for months or even years.
The U.N. Security Council has passed eight rounds of ineffective sanctions since 2006 when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. We should not expect any new results as matters now currently stand from the latest round.
Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. MacMaster has stressed that it is “impossible to overstate the danger posed by North Korea,” and that “we are out of time” in dealing with the country’s increased aggressions.
Speaking at a September press briefing, he said ” . . . we’ve been kicking the can down the road and we are out of road.” He added, “For those who’ve been commenting about the lack of a military option, there is a military option. It’s not what we prefer to do.”
Even former Obama U.N. Ambassador and National Security Advisor Susan Rice has admitted that previous efforts to curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions over the last two decades have failed. She told a CNN interviewer, “The fact of the matter is that despite all those efforts, the North Korean regime has been able to succeed in progressing with its program, both nuclear and missile.”
Rice then followed up in a New York Times op-ed piece saying, “History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea — the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War.” She added, “It will require being pragmatic.”
That’s where I adamantly disagree with her, just as I vigorously argued with my two sons on this matter. That mutually assured destruction (MAD) standoff policy with Russia (and also with China) didn’t subordinate our nation’s security future to the sole discretion of a paranoid maniacle nut job who murdered his half-brother and uncle along with hundreds of senior government officials.
President Trump took an appropriate but largely symbolic step his month in restoring Pyongyang to the State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors. George W. Bush had removed them from that status in 2008.
Any peaceful resolution of the North Korea nuclear dilemma will require seriously determined interventions by China which accounts for about 90 percent of Pyongyang’s trade revenues. This, in turn, will continue to require unrelenting American economic pressure on Beijing to make that happen.
Some will argue that potential costs and other consequences of an economic war with China over North Korea will be very high. Nevertheless, decades of failed appeasement policies have already proven to be very expensive. Above all, they have gifted the Kim family with the precious treasure of time to develop and stockpile fearsome weapons of intimidation that threaten our lives and future.
Granting even more time for this situation to worsen is unacceptable. Exhausted diplomatic half-measures leave no peaceful choice but to act rapidly and aggressively. This Thanksgiving season I’m grateful that our president seems committed to do so.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom” (2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
Source: https://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/emp-hermit-kingdom-icbm/2017/11/27/id/828217/
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