[Finance.Yahoo] After North Korea's decades-old missile program on Tuesday finally bore out a nuclear-capable weapon able to reach the US, President Donald Trump vowed to confront the country "very strongly."Addressing an audience in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday, Trump said the US was considering "severe things" to retaliate against a nation he said was "behaving in a very, very dangerous manner."
But there's almost nothing that can be done to stop North Korea now.
Whiny fatalistic ba$tards. No wonder it's so hard to deal with the Norks with your kind in the way all the time.
Shortly before North Korea's watershed launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, Trump was briefed on a new range of military options for dealing with the country. As Business Insider has reported on extensively, military options for facing North Korea are extremely dangerous at best and unimaginably catastrophic at worst.
| Because they involve WAR, which is dangerous for children and other living things. But that is precisely the point, since non-dangerous actions have not effected the desired change. |
Because we have a little time left and we have more to gain by staging our military than to lose while the Norks stage theirs.
But according to Yun Sun, a senior associate at the Stimson Center, Trump never had any good options for dealing with North Korea, and he has even worse options now.
"The ICBM test removed the false hope that we might be able to stop North Korean nuclear provocations with either sanctions or the use of military provocations," Sun said.
So, unlike Sid, you choose death. Great.
North Korea has vastly accelerated the pace of its missile testing under Trump's presidency, but it had been preparing these tests for years, dating back to the Clinton administration. By the time Trump took office, North Koreans were just a few months from achieving their goal of a working ICBM.
According to Sun, nothing was going to stop them at this late stage.
In years past, North Korea had floated the idea of suspending its missile program in exchange for the US halting military drills with South Korea, but the US refused every time on the grounds that the regularly planned, completely legal drills did not at all compare with Kim Jong Un's nuclear threats and illegal development.
Now, faced with the possibility that North Korea has an unstoppable nuclear bomb, why would the US lay down its arms?
"The one thing we wanted to prevent North Korea from having, they already have it," Sun said. "What is the reasoning for us to suspend our military exercises at this point?"
The US and the international community can agree on sanctions for North Korea, which China may water down, but diplomatic talks are now strained, and the US's hand is undeniably weaker.
Short on imagination, are we?
"How," Sun asked, "can we reward ICBM tests with engagement?"