The Key Question at the U.N.: What Does North Korea Want? [View all]

[DemocratSinceBirth]

As President Donald Trump and other world leaders gather at the United Nations this week, a lot of important questions hang in the air, but none more important than this one: What does North Korea want?

That is, what is North Korea’s real goal in its relentless, reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons as well as missiles that can carry them as far as the United States? The answer will determine whether it’s even possible to push the country off the nuclear path at this point, or whether a strategy of regime change or containment of a nuclear-armed country is the most realistic option—or, most ominously, whether armed conflict is likely.

The international community is, of course, casting about for ways to deter North Korea, and U.S. officials say there will be conversations this week about imposing more-severe economic sanctions than the ones already implemented in a pair of U.N. Security Council resolutions this year. Chinese and Russian companies doing business with North Korea are likely targets.

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If diplomacy ultimately can’t reverse the nuclear program, the U.S. and its allies likely will be looking at a long-term strategy of containing a nuclear-armed North Korea and all that entails: far more spending on missile-defense systems, a bigger American military presence in Asia, military buildups in Japan and South Korea, possibly the reintroduction of American tactical nuclear weapons into South Korea.

Such a containment strategy worked with the Soviet Union for half a century. It is an expensive and frightening proposition—though perhaps not as frightening as war on the Korean Peninsula.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-key-question-at-the-u-n-what-does-north-korea-want-1505750645