by Conrad BlackIt has become a truism in the continuing North Korean crisis to say that there is no good military option, but in fact there is.
The fact is that if a carefully planned swarm attack of low-flying cruise missiles was launched against the North Korean artillery massed across the frontier, just 35 miles from the immense South Korean capital city, Seoul, as well as at all North Korean missile launchers, and research and missile storage facilities, it would denuclearize the North and eliminate its power of intimidation against the South.
As the attacks occurred, the U.S. could warn North Korea, directly and via China, that if any attack were launched against any American or allied sites, the North Korean regime would be obliterated, but that if there were no military response, the United States and its allies would not seek regime change in the North or the reunification of Korea.
It is inconceivable that, in these circumstances, the Chinese would not sternly counsel Pyongyang to stand down. China does not want a nuclear North Korea, or a reunited Korea, which would shortly become a second Japan in industrial and strategic terms, immediately adjacent to it.
All the tired palaver about negotiating patiently with China about constraining North Korea is practically beside the point. It won't unmake North Korea as a nuclear military power. And it won't deter Iran from becoming one, now at the end of the 10-year life of the shabby agreement President Obama sponsored with that terrorism-supporting country.
Iran and North Korea have exposed the fraudulence of the non-proliferation regime, in which the existing nuclear powers made the spurious promise to pursue joint self-disarmament. The best that can be salvaged is a nuclear club from which psychopathically governed countries such as North Korea and Iran are excluded.
President Trump said on Tuesday that "All options are on the table." There is only one that will work, and it should be very seriously considered.