In The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan writes that despite the new evidence that North Korea possesses the technology for creating the world’s worst weapon, a hydrogen bomb, the U.S. should wait on a preemptive attack. He writes:
Arguably the world’s worst regime now has the world’s worst weapon, an H-bomb, with ICBMs to follow.
What else does Kim want? He wants the U.S. to halt joint military maneuvers with the South, recognize his regime, tear up the security pact with Seoul, and get our forces off the peninsula.
No way, says President Trump.
Pat continues:
The U.S. should let the North strike the first blow, unless we have hard evidence Kim is preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
Why do we still keep 28,000 troops in South Korea as a trip wire to bring us into a second Korean war from its first hours, a war that could bring nuclear strikes on our troops, bases, and, soon, our nation?
We cannot walk away from our Korean allies in this crisis. But we should look upon the North’s drive to marry nuclear warheads to ICBMs as a wake-up call to review a policy rooted in Cold War realities that ceased to exist when Ronald Reagan went home.
After this crisis, South Korea and Japan should begin to make the kind of defense effort the U.S. does, and create their own nuclear deterrents. This might get Beijing’s attention, as our pleas for its assistance with North Korea apparently have not.
Already involved in land disputes with a nuclear-armed Russia and India, China’s dominance of Asia—should Japan and South Korea acquire nuclear weapons—begins to diminish.
Read more here.
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