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Option 4: Muscular Containment
This option conditionally offers the least bad choice for the time being. This comprehensive strategy entails largely what the Trump administration has wisely done so far:

  • Keeping all options — including pre-emption — seriously on the table while avoiding the trap of prematurely drawing lines that would trap us in the binary choice of an all or nothing response regardless of the circumstances.
  • Preparing to use the full range of U.S. capabilities to defend ourselves and our allies.
  • Sustaining a preponderance of power on land, sea, and in space credibly to deter our adversaries in the region, especially North Korea and China.
  • Cutting off the sources of hard currency to the North Korean regime.
  • Restricting the flow of oil to their military and weapons program.
  • Penalizing countries that aid, abet, and do business with the North Korean regime.
  • Forging a coalition of willing decent democratic allies rather than relying on an unreliable China or Russia to bail us out of a confrontation the way Obama did at such enormous moral political cost with Putin in Syria.

Ultimately, the United States cannot safely tolerate a North Korea armed with an ICBM arsenal capable of striking the United States. What President Trump decides to do about North Korea will resonate widely and deeply beyond this immediate confrontation. Our friend and foes will draw critical conclusions about our foresight and fortitude affecting their calculations.

Close

Trump must say what he means and mean what he says. Or North Korea will wind up being the equivalent of Obama’s Syrian debacle where American credibility vanished into the ether along with the evanescent red line in the sand.

Beyond these specific measures the administration should take on North Korea, President Trump must convince the American people about the imperative of accelerating the research, development, and deployment of ballistic missile defense. Otherwise, the increasingly costly and risky predicament the administration inherited with Korea offers but a bitter taste of what is to come.

Robert G. Kaufman is a professor at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and author of “Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grand Strategy Weakened America.”[lz_pagination]