Negotiating with a Madman: North Korean Threats

    North Korea is once again up to its old tricks of threatening anyone within its nuclear reach, but now they have made the claim that their military leaders have the following authority, "The report came hours after North Korea's military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. ".  With this stern new warning from one of the United States staunch enemies it is important to review what the North's capabilities really are.

    In the previously mentioned article it is claimed that North Korea has yet to attain the technology necessary to reduce the size of the nuclear warhead enough to enable their rockets to reach the west coast of the United States, but is this a unanimously held belief?  According to www.Nuclearfiles.org, "Estimates of its range are therefore uncertain, but extend from 3,750 km to 6,700 km. If these are accurate, the Taepodong-2 would be capable of targeting most of the continental United States."  This is a frightening assessment of the rouge nations strike capabilities.  So why do we take such potential threats so lightly?

     The United States is not unfamiliar with dictators, or madmen, making threats against it.  In World War II Hitler made it quite clear what his intentions were and we failed to stand up to him in the beginning, and look where that got us.  More recently we knew that Osama Bin Laden was preparing to use airlines in some sort of domestic attack, and once again we failed to react.  Now we have a clear threat from a belligerent nation that is has been run by a family dynasty that has been plagued by madness.  So what are we to do?

     I would contend that we do more than 'try and defuse' the situation by making economic threats.  Several years ago under the Bush Administration the United States made the idiotic decision to send the North $100 million in economic aid, and in return they said they would give up their nuclear arms.  Yeah.  That worked!  Are we as a nation going to wait until two nuclear bombs detonate on our soil before we think they're serious?  I would ask our leaders to take a much more firm stance and send a militaristic message to this young leader with allusions of grandeur.  I'm not talking about declaring all out war, but a strike against its nuclear facilities, such as the one Israel successfully launched against Syria, and this should suffice for now to cripple their capabilities for the near future.  If not, we may face the horrible consequence of inaction.  Unfortunately, for the good of free people, war is at times necessary.  God bless and keep your head up.

 By Jeffrey Brandon Lee