By Zach Przystup
With North Korea’s growing nuclear threat, the tired policy of “strategic patience” needs to be put to bed.
While all eyes remain fixed on March 24 to see if the United States can prevent Iran from getting the bomb, a new report from the Johns Hopkins U.S.-Korea Institute warns that North Korea is on track to have 100 of them by 2020. Inflated though this number may be, the functional difference between 50 and 100 bombs is like that between $50 million and $100 million – with either, you’ve power and you’re treated seriously. Clearly, North Korea is on the verge of nuclear breakout.
The consequences of a full-blown nuclear North Korea would be every bit as destabilizing to regional and world order as a nuclear Iran. It would call into question the U.S. rebalance to East Asia and commitment to allies in Seoul and Tokyo, potentially unleash a volatile regional nuclear arms race, and enable the Kim regime to continue its crimes against humanity behind a fortified nuclear shield. For all that Beijing worries about the ensuing chaos of a regime collapse in Pyongyang, a fully nuclear North Korea would be a veritable bull in a China shop.
To avoid such an outcome, U.S. policy towards North Korea must change. In a recent speech at the Carnegie Foundation, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman stressed that North Korea will never get the security, prosperity, or respect it wants without negotiating an end to its nuclear program. This long-held U.S. position ignores two basic facts. First, the Kim regime wants security, prosperity, and respect for itself alone – its policy choices of nukes over nutrition and gulags over growth demonstrate its contempt for the rest of the population. Second, it has judged that pursuing a nuclear program is the surest route to these goals.
Read the full story at The Diplomat