issues to present a comprehensive articulation of the country’s national security threats and the goals of U.S. security policy, stated that “North Korea seeks the capability to kill millions of Americans with nuclear weapons,” reflecting the growing concern in Washington following Pyongyang’s testing of ICBMs and its recent nuclear test. The document also echoed the comments of National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who had said that the world is “running out of time” on North Korea. The potential for war with North Korea is growing with each passing day, he said: “We’re in a race. We’re in a race to be able to solve this problem.” The NSS document emphasized the need to confront the threat:
North Korea is ruled as a ruthless dictatorship without regard for human dignity. For more than 25 years, it has pursued nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of every commitment it has made. Today, these missiles and weapons threaten the United States and our allies. The longer we ignore threats from countries determined to proliferate and develop weapons of mass destruction, the worse such threats become, and the fewer defensive options we have.
Such beliefs about Pyongyang’s goals were driving the Trump administration’s approach—to strangle North Korea’s ability to earn hard currency to fund itself, through a steady course of sanctions, isolation, and military activity, including nuclear bomber deployments to the Korean Peninsula and U.S. Navy destroyers sent to patrol North Korea’s east coast. Amid ongoing tweets from the president that “only one thing will work” in dealing with North Korea, senior administration officials continued to indicate that diplomacy is the preferred approach.
But they also repeated their refrain about U.S. “military options,” suggesting that a real plan for military action against North Korea was in the works or at least being seriously considered. McMaster commented on the possibility of “preventive war,” while Mattis told the Association of the United States Army that the army has “got to be ready to ensure that we have military options that our president can employ, if needed,” and Tillerson told CNN that “diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.” On Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham, who became a close confidant of President Trump’s, repeated comments about the possibility of war. He told CNN, “[Trump] is ready, if necessary, to destroy this regime to protect America, and I hope the regime understands that if President Trump has to pick between destroying the North Korean regime and the American homeland, he’s going to destroy the regime. I hope China understands that also.”
The murder of Kim Jong Nam in an international airport, the apparent torture and eventual death of American student Otto Warmbier, who was detained for seventeen months for an alleged “hostile act” against the regime, and Kim’s reckless actions and statements also fed suspicions that Kim Jong Un was not “rational” and therefore could not be deterred from using nuclear weapons against the United States.
THE LOGIC AND ILLOGIC OF HITTING KIM JONG UN
Let’s say that Washington decided to attack North Korea. There are three broad reasons why a limited military strike could have a positive payoff. First, a U.S. military offensive could shatter Kim’s confidence in his ability to drive events on the Korean Peninsula. The strike would also invalidate Pyongyang’s fundamental assumption about America’s unwillingness to use military force, which has sustained Kim’s perception that he is free to test the limits of international tolerance. Such a turn of events would force him to choose between his survival and his nuclear weapons. Pyongyang’s future risk-taking might be curtailed by the fear of another attack. Second, Kim or his successor(s) might consider entering into negotiations with the United States on the nuclear weapons program to buy time and international goodwill, possibly driven by the voices of newly emboldened actors in the regime who might urge caution or apply a brake on Kim’s ambitions. Third, Beijing and Moscow, fearing more assertive or follow-up U.S. military action or a U.S. president indifferent to their demand for restraint, could try to dramatically curb economic ties to get Kim or his successors to back down.
These hypothetical benefits are highly unlikely ever to materialize because Kim’s interpretation of U.S. actions would be muddied by the unpredictability of actual war and by potential policy confusion and dysfunction as a result of the groupthink among his inner circle of advisers, given the silencing of dissent over the years. A U.S. military offensive would probably be the first major challenge of Kim’s reign