How To Deal With North Korea

Today, US President Trump met with the new President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, to discuss the situation in North Korea. Following the meeting, he boldly proclaimed: "The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed ... and frankly, that patience is over."

So if the US is no longer going to sit and be patient with North Korea, and wait in the unlikely hope that it will abandon its nuclear ambitions, what options does the US have?

The fact of the matter is that the US has quite a few options up its sleeve. However, they are all, without exception, awful. These options range from an all-out war with North Korea, in order to initiate a regime change and end to the Kims' nuclear program, through to limited military strikes, and even a targeted assassination of the country's leader.

The first of these options, and the only one with a guarantee of success would result in a war that kills millions of people, causing death and destruction on a scale not seen since WWII. The other options have a high risk of not succeeding, and if they fail, would likely result in a full-scale war anyway.

One final and equally unattractive option is to simply to do nothing and allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and live with this threat.

The world lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War and yet managed the risks in a successful way. So could the same not be done in the future? Maybe, but what then could stop South Korea and Japan from going nuclear too?

Mark Bowden's article for the Atlantic presents an incredibly detailed breakdown of each of these options based on extensive interviews and analysis of military capabilities. A lengthy and sobering read, it perfectly illustrates why North Korea really is a problem with no solution.