Our So-Called Foreign Policy: That North Korea Nuclear Threat? Time to Buck Up!

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deterrence, foreign policy establishment, missile defense, national security, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Robert E. Kelly, South Korea, The National Interest

Yesterday, I wrote (again) about how America’s foreign policy establishment continues trying to keep the wool over their compatriots’ eyes about how the main U.S. security alliances (especially with South Korea) are exposing the nation to the threat of nuclear attack (in this case, from North Korea). Now I’m wondering if this same (bipartisan) group may start to change tactics. The evidence? An absolutely stupefying post in The National Interest that tries to assure Americans that such an attack wouldn’t really be so bad.

Let me repeat that: A (rightly) respected foreign policy journal has just posted an essay arguing that it’s “risky threat inflation” to believe that North Korea’s nuclear weapons represent an “existential” danger to the United States – i.e., one that could destroy it as a functioning society.

In a literal sense, the author, political scientist Robert E. Kelly, is right. Even when the North Korean dictatorship builds nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the American homeland, the United States would probably survive as a political entity. The main reason, as the author notes, is that for the time being, the North’s arsenal will almost certainly remain too small to land on more than a few targets inside the geographically vast continental 48 states and their “widely dispersed population.” So just as Manhattan withstood the September 11 attack, the nation in more or less its current form could probably withstand a North Korean strike.

But this kind of literalness, of course, is the literalness of children. And nothing makes the terrible truth clearer than Kelly’s own words. For example, he writes that

>“The humanitarian costs of even one nuclear detonation would be enormous, of course, and the national psychological shock would be akin to nothing in U.S. history, bar perhaps the Civil War. But this is not the same thing as hitting the United States hard enough that its society begins to fragment and its government collapse.”

>“Large numbers of civilian casualties, even in the millions, and the loss of several American cities is not existential. Horrible, yes. A dramatic reorientation of American life, absolutely. But not the end of America.”

>“Even Imperial Japan in 1945, after months of punishing U.S. bombing, managed to ride out the nuclear detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki without a national breakdown.”

>“Assuming…that North Korea strikes Washington and America’s other large cities, it is not obvious that the United States would then fall into some manner of political anarchy or revolution.”

There is, to be sure, a weird twist to Kelly’s analysis. The “threat inflation” risk that’s principally troubling this South Korea-based analyst is not the kind that would cow Washington enough to prevent U.S. nuclear retaliation against North Korea following an unprovoked Northern strike against American territory. Instead, what he’s worried about is that American leaders could grow so (mistakenly) terrified of the North Korean nukes’ destructive capability that the Trump administration would try to take them out with preemptive airstrikes and thus “ignite a disastrous regional conflict.”

Which means that he’s worried mainly that South Korea and its neighbors would come under destructive attack, not the United States. But the arguments he marshals could certainly be used, at least in theory, to stiffen allegedly flaccid public spines in the event of any kind of U.S.-North Korea showdown. And as I have written repeatedly, such a confrontation would be practically unthinkable were the United States not committed to protect the militarily free-riding South, and worse, were tens of thousands of American troops and their families not deployed right in the line of Korean fire, expressly to deny a President any real choice about using nuclear weapons (and invite retaliation) once they were attacked.

Kelly’s article, however, does have one (unwitting) virtue. His description of the likely devastation from even a smallish North Korea-scale attack should be enough to make any reader wonder what possible upside to defending South Korea could come close to justifying this completely unprecedented kind of downside. The question holds even for those who insist that such an attack is unlikely (because North Korea must know that the United States would respond with an annihilating all-out retaliatory strike) and that therefore the risk is worth running in order to maintain deterrence on the peninsula. And it especially holds for missile defense optimists. For if all of them are wrong, America will suffer literally millions of deaths, countless wounded, long-term radiation poisoning of survivors and the environment, and gargantuan material losses. Even a single warhead penetrating anti-missile systems would wreak virtually unimaginable physical and psychological havoc.

Whether running such risks to deter attack – nuclear or not – on the United States itself is debatable, and although I disagree with them, pacifists and anti-nuclear activists have long made counter-arguments that deserve consideration.

But running such risks to deter attack on another country, whose loss, however terrible, Americans unmistakably could withstand (in spades) strikes me, anyway, as lying far outside the bounds of rationality. At the very least, it demands the type of open, explicit debate that the foreign policy establishment remains determined to avoid. If Kelly’s post brings this debate closer, however unintentionally, I’ll be the first one to thank him.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: South Korea’s Elections are Likely to Make America’s Asia Strategy Even Loonier

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allies, Asia, deterrence, East Asia-Pacific, free-riding, Kim Jong Un, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Tim Shorrock

This coming Tuesday will not only see a new presidential election in South Korea. It may also mark the day when a second big wheel flies off of America’s grand strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular off its approach to addressing the North Korea nuclear weapons threat.

For now on top of the United States’ loss of escalation dominance on the Korean peninsula – which I’ve written about for more than two years and which has needlessly exposed the American homeland to the risk of nuclear attack – the U.S. ally supposedly facing the greatest threat from Kim Jong Un’s heavily armed dictatorship could wind up defecting from the anti-Pyongyang coalition. It would be hard to concoct a scenario that would be less defensible strategically and politically, and more utterly absurd.

Of course, the results of the South Korea election haven’t yet come in. The front-runner, veteran left-of-center politician Moon Jae-in, is by no means anti-American. And as with so many politicians, he may govern very differently from how he’s campaigned. But as made clear by coverage of South Korean politics by my good friend Tim Shorrock – who has written on the country for decades – Moon believes that the United States and North Korea’s neighbors need to start putting much more emphasis on reopening negotiations with the North and much less on threats of military action or more effective economic sanctions. At least as important, many of his compatriots clearly agree.

Moon and his supporters could well be right – if only because they’ve been so close to the situation on the peninsula for so long. (Tim strongly believes this to be the case.) Nevertheless, they could be wrong as well. After all, their very proximity to the North might be denying them valuable perspective. Their views may be influenced too strongly by shared ethnicity. And they may, like classic free-riders, be assuming that the American nuclear umbrella will ultimately bail out the South if they’re wrong.

But although the merits of the Moon case are uncertain, the implications for the United States are anything but. If South Korea’s “doves” are right, a more durable peace could indeed be created in Korea (meaning, specifically, that the Korean War would finally come to an official end more than 60 years after an armistice halted the fighting in 1953). As a result, Northeast Asia, one of the world’s major economic dynamos, would be stabilized. And the prospect of the United States being drawn into a nuclear war with North Korea would be greatly diminished.

But it can’t be forgotten that the (mounting) nuclear risks posed by North Korea to the United States stem entirely from the American commitment to defend South Korea – and more specifically, it stems from the longstanding U.S. decision to try to deter a North Korean invasion of the South by stationing nearly 30,000 troops right at the Demilitarized Zone. They couldn’t possibly halt the North’s conventional forces, but their deaths would almost surely provoke an American nuclear strike on the North. This prospect that has certainly helped keep Pyongyang at bay – which was arguably an acceptable risk to run when Pyongyang lacked any means to hit back at American territory. But soon, pursuing this strategy could result in the North successfully launching a nuclear missile at an American city – or two or three.

Even worse from an American standpoint, a prime reason that the South relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for its defense is its failure to field adequate conventional forces itself. Despite living right next door to one of the world’s most heavily armed and unpredictable countries, South Korea only spends 2.7 percent of its entire economy on its armed forces. By comparison, the United States – which has no neighbors that are either powerful or hostile, let alone both – spends 4.3 percent.

All of which means that if the South Korea doves are wrong, the American people could pay a fearful price largely because one of the world’s leading economic powers has chosen to skimp on its military, and because its (new) leaders insisted on a diplomacy-first policy that gave Pyongyang yet more time to strengthen its nuclear forces. That’s a heckuva downside. And let’s not forget the chaos that would result from the United States and South Korea splitting in public and pursuing two dramatically different policies toward the North.

Supporters of the strategic status quo in East Asia are right – America’s longstanding policies have brought impressive benefits. But they’re wrong in insisting that the benefits for the United States have even remotely approached those for the East Asians themselves, including South Korea. And the emergence of a credible North Korean nuclear threat to the American homeland has skewed the relationship of costs and benefits much further against the United States.

I can’t think of a more unacceptable situation from America’s vantage point. Even before these South Korean political trends had become so prominent, it was clear to me that the best strategy for the American people was to recognize the North Korean challenge as the responsibility of North Korea’s (very wealthy and powerful) neighbors, and to withdraw the U.S. forces whose presence is bound increasingly to endanger the security of the United States itself.

The election of a South Korean dove would turn current U.S. strategy positively looney and even more dangerous to Americans – clashing strongly with the stated views of the presumed chief beneficiary’s new leader, and less able than ever to turn up the screws on the North.

I hope instead it causes America’s ossified bipartisan foreign policy establishment to realize finally that Washington can’t be placed in a position ostensibly of caring about South Korea’s security more than the South Koreans, and that if their new leaders disagree with U.S. priorities, that’s their sovereign right. By the same token, this ally can’t expect to have its cake and eat it, too. Bottom line? President Trump should let President-to-be Moon and his backers know that if they want to engage with North Korea, they feel free to give it a whirl – and that in the true spirit of an America First diplomacy, the United States will be wishing them the very best from safely on the sidelines.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. North Korea Policy Remains Dangerously Behind the Curve Despite Signs of Progress

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alliances, Charles Krauthammer, China, deterrence, extended deterrence, Finlandization, foreign policy establishment, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pundits, South Korea, Trump, Washington Post

As I explained last week (not that it’s my insight alone!), America’s leading political pundits enjoy much of their fame (and consequent incomes) to their access to power. Close relations with American and other leaders can turn them into craven establishment mouthpieces when they express their own opinions. But they also enable these commentators to serve as reliable carriers of messages being sent quite deliberately by decision-makers, and by the policy specialists who advise them.

That’s why the latest column from the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer was both encouraging and discouraging when it comes to dealing with the growing nuclear weapons threat from North Korea. The good news, if Krauthammer’s piece is any guide, is that the policy community is finally starting to consider some desperately needed outside-the-box ideas for making sure that U.S. policy doesn’t wind up with Pyongyang destroying an American city or two. The bad news is that these same policy specialists and political leaders still don’t have their arms completely around this intensifying crisis.

Krauthammer’s main point seems to be that the United States still has “major cards” to play both against North Korea and against China, whose help President Trump says he’s counting on heavily to either de-nuclearize the North or somehow contain its weapons program to an acceptable degree. Some of them are pretty innovative and constructive, and per my analysis above, if he’s mentioning them, that’s a strong indication that important conventional thinkers and policymakers are mulling them, too.

For example, Krauthammer observes that Washington could ease many of China’s fears about the consequences of regime change in North Korea (which he describes nicely), and spur decisive pressures by Beijing, by “abjuring Korean reunification. This would not be Germany, where the communist state was absorbed into the West. We would accept an independent, but Finlandized, North Korea.

“During the Cold War, Finland was, by agreement, independent but always pro-Russian in foreign policy. Here we would guarantee that a new North Korea would be independent but always oriented toward China. For example, the new regime would forswear ever joining any hostile alliance.”

For my part, I agree that no significant American interests would be compromised or even affected by such a deal.

Maybe even more significantly, Krauthammer seems to be recommending that the United States suggest to China that, if it doesn’t get on the North Korea stick, South Korea and Japan would likely develop nuclear weapons themselves. As he notes, because of the history of brutal conflicts “The latter is the ultimate Chinese nightmare.”

If I’m right, this Krauthammer point signals that American policy toward Asian security (and possibly European security) could be headed for a highly welcome sea change. After all, as I’ve explained, preventing Japan’s nuclearization in particular has been a central goal of U.S. strategy in Asia since the end of World War II. Because a nuclear Japan, or even a conventionally mighty Japan, was thought too likely to return to its warlike ways, American leaders for decades have insisted on handling the job of defending Japan, and incurring many of the greatest risks – including triggering nuclear conflict.

And as you may remember, when candidate Trump suggested during his campaign for the White House that this approach be rethought, he was hammered by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment – including former President Obama – as a dangerous know-nothing.

So the change Krauthammer could be foreshadowing would represent nothing less than a U.S. foreign policy revolution.  It would mean that Washington at long last recognizes that the favorable nuclear balance that for so many years arguably made this policy of “extended deterrence” a reasonable risk is now rapidly changing for the worse. Specifically, as I’ve written, North Korea’s progress toward developing a secure retaliatory force now could be exposing the American homeland to risk that is by definition unacceptable because it’s being borne in order to protect other countries, not the United States itself.

Unfortunately, Krauthammer’s column also may add to the evidence that official and quasi-official thinking on North Korea remains way behind the curve. For example, he seems to recommend that Washington at least implicitly threaten China with the return of American nuclear weapons to South Korea if Beijing doesn’t raise its North Korea game.

Actually, this move would reduce the nuclear threat posed to the United States by war in Korea – by increasing the odds that such a conflict’s nuclear dimension would be confined to the exchange of short-or medium-range weapons whose destructive effects would be limited to the Korean peninsula. North Korea, according to the conventional and, to me, reasonable, wisdom, would continue to be deterred from launching nukes at the United States itself for fear that America would retaliate by using much more powerful intercontinental weapons that could completely annihilate the North (as well as the South).

So what’s the problem? Precisely because it alone would suffer the greatest damage, and precisely because that knowledge would make America likelier to use those short-range weapons in response to an invasion from the North, this strategy has surely become completely unacceptable to South Korea. And you can bet that neighboring Japan isn’t a big fan, either.

The Asian allies would greatly prefer that, if U.S. nuclear weapons are used in a Korean conflict, they be the weapons that shift as many risks as possible to the United States itself – and create the chance that the nuclear dimension of any Korean conflict would be fought literally over their heads. South Korea would also (legitimately) tell the United States that threatening North Korea with instantaneous nuclear destruction if it invades the South is the best way to reduce the chances of that invasion taking place to begin with. In other words, it’s the best way to strengthen deterrence and therefore preserve peace.

I know that for those outside the foreign policy community, these ideas sound completely loony. But they’re exactly the kinds of ideas that had roiled relations between the United States and its allies in Europe for decades, too.

Krauthammer also endorses, at least in principle, the notion of conveying American resolve to the North by shooting down “a North Korean missile in mid-flight to demonstrate both our capacity to defend ourselves and the futility of a North Korean missile force that can be neutralized technologically.”

He’s correct in writing that this option would be safer than a “preemptive attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and missile sites [which] would almost surely precipitate an invasion of South Korea with untold millions of casualties.” But what if the shoot-down attempt fails? Wouldn’t that further embolden the North? I sure as heck wouldn’t want to take that chance.

So despite the encouraging signs in Krauthammer’s column, I remain convinced that the Korean crisis is a situation where the only choices for the United States are not between good and bad, or even between bad and worse, but (because of the nuclear dimension) between perversely reckless and downright suicidal. Therefore, U.S. leaders need to capitalize on the only truly decisive asset working on their country’s behalf –America’s great distance from the peninsula – and withdraw as soon as possible the military forces still stationed in South Korea. They have no ability to advance or defend important U.S. interests at acceptable risk, but they have greatly and rapidly increasing ability to drag the nation needlessly into a potentially disastrous conflagration.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: America Still Playing Uncle Sucker on Asian Security

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, deterrence, Japan, Kim Jong Un, national security, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South Korea, Trump

If you want the clearest possible explanation of why America’s longstanding national security strategy in Asia is increasingly, jaw-droppingly, and – worst of all – needlessly dangerous, check out what China’s foreign minister just said about the growing North Korea nuclear missile threat Washington has been coping with, and then look at a map.

According to top China diplomat (at least by title) Wang Yi, the United States and North Korea “are like two accelerating trains” speeding toward “a head-on collision.” Pyongyang is developing ever more potent nuclear weapons that are ever more capable of hitting American territory. So that – along with the scarily erratic nature of the North Korean regime – explains the “dangerous” part. The map explains the “needless” part.

So take out (or look up) your atlases. You’ll see that the United States and North Korea – the countries on that collision course – are slightly less than 6,900 miles apart. Now look at some of the countries that Wang evidently believes aren’t on a collision course with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un. China itself is right next door. So is South Korea. And Russia. Japan is less than 800 miles away. Why are they, unlike geographically remote America, seemingly lumped into the bystander category?

The (intimately related) reasons: First, the United States has significant military forces stationed nearly along the Demilitarized Zone dividing North from South Korea, along with other major deployments in Japan. And don’t forget their family members! In other words, the Americans in Korea will be sitting right in the way if much stronger North Korean forces invade the south. And the Americans in Japan are exposed to Pyongyang’s missiles, as North Korea’s latest test launches have again made all too clear.

Shocked? You shouldn’t be. That’s the idea. If North Korean aggression kills large numbers of Americans, and showing signs of succeeding, a U.S. president will face strong pressure to respond by using nuclear weapons against Kim’s military and country.

As I’ve written repeatedly, until the last few years, this strategy was defensible. Not only were North Korea’s nuclear forces greatly inferior to America’s, but they lacked the means to hit the United States. So the threat of U.S. nuclear weapons use was, reasonably, judged to be a prudent policy that would deter any North Korean aggression in the first place, and thereby ensure the security of both South Korea and Japan without risk to the American homeland.

But as I’ve also written repeatedly, North Korea’s nuclear program is steadily moving toward being able to strike the United States. So the risks to Americans posed by this strategy are way up – and sure to rise even higher. Worse, the North Korean forces are thought to be increasingly survivable. That is, they’re either mobile and/or well hidden enough to prevent Washington from having much confidence of destroying them all either in a preemptive first strike, or an attack on North Korea launched in response to any invasion. As a result, even if America’s own nukes destroyed North Korea, whichever of the latter’s leaders escaped this fate could order a revenge attack.

And the second reason why the United States alone is (rightly) described as one of the two oncoming trains is that for decades, Washington has actively discouraged Japan and even South Korea from fielding the forces needed to deal with North Korea on their own for fear that one or both countries would build their own nuclear forces in response, and thereby “destabilize” the supposedly crucial East Asia-Pacific region still further. The United States also remains determined to prevent Japan from becoming a serious and independent conventional military power, too, which allegedly would increase the odds of it returning to its aggressive, militaristic past. So U.S. leaders have decided to bear the lion’s share of the burden and danger of keeping North Korea (and China) at bay.

Since this policy now means that protecting Asian allies could mean the annihilation of American cities, it’s clearly time for Washington to admit the danger, get out of the way, and let the region’s countries handle the North Korea problem. This goes double since Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia are amply capable economically and technologically of building the militaries that can get the job done.

Two closely linked objections that have been raised since this American strategy was born in the aftermath of World War II will surely be raised again. The first is that such a U.S. withdrawal could produce not only reasonable defense buildups by Asian powers, but – because so many have historically fought and mistrusted one another – heated conventional and nuclear arms races. The second is that such competitions would backfire big-time on the United States, largely because Asia is so economically critical to America.

What the stand-patters don’t seem to get, however, is that precisely because American policy looks so positively suicidal – and non-credible – to the allies in particular, a growing chorus in Japan and South Korea is urging nuclear-ization anyway. I’ve reported previously on such developments, and just yesterday came new calls for such capabilities. As the North Korea nuclear forces get better and better, expect further widening of this divide between America’s policy rationale on the one hand, and entirely understandable Asian mistrust on the other.

As for the economics, even if trade and investment with highly protectionist Asia were a winning proposition for the United States (and it’s not by a long shot), it’s going to get increasingly dicey for American leaders to keep insisting that it’s important to risk nuclear attack on the homeland to make sure that U.S. businesses can make some more money in the region.

In that vein, however, it remains troubling that even the most detailed reporting lately on the mounting North Korean threat keeps omitting the fact that the United States faces greater and greater dangers from Pyongyang not because it’s protecting itself. After all, existing U.S. policy of responding with nuclear arms to a direct nuclear attack from North Korea (or any country) on its own territory is as credible a deterrent as is possible (even against arguably lunatic enemies). Instead, the United States faces this nuclear dangers because it’s protecting allies that it’s been encouraging to free-ride on its defense guarantees.

Equally troubling – even though Donald Trump pointed out most of these Asia alliance-related problems during the campaign, he now seems determined to preserve the policy status quo. If I didn’t know better, I’d conclude there’s a conspiracy of silence.

Following Up: Washington’s Still Covertly Exposing America to Asia Nuclear Threats

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2016 election, Asia, Defense Department, deterrence, Following Up, missile defense, North Korea, nuclear weapons, presidential debates, South Korea

There’s a good news-bad news way to report the latest development in the U.S. government’s ongoing efforts to cope with the surging nuclear threat posed by North Korea. Too bad the bad news weighs much heavier on the scale.

On the one hand, it’s good news that Washington is finally acknowledging with deeds as well as words a danger that RealityChek has been highlighting for years: Kim Jong Un’s regime keeps making impressive strides towards building nuclear weapons capable of neutralizing America’s commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with its own nuclear weapons. The reasons? As I’ve noted, the North’s weapons are nearing the point at which they can hit U.S. territory. And just as frighteningly, Pyongyang is learning how to boost greatly the odds that at least some of these weapons will be able to survive an American strike to knock them out before they can be used – either before a military conflict begins on the Korean peninsula, or while one’s underway.

As a result, the North can be increasingly confident that Washington won’t use its own nuclear weapons to stop any invasion it mounts of the South, and therefore increasingly confident that its superior conventional forces (with or without nuclear help) would power it to victory.

And a special bonus for the United States: Because 28,000 U.S. troops remain in South Korea even though the Cold War has been over for nearly 30 years, a North Korea invasion could well confront an American president with this agonizing choice: Use the nukes, and risk losing one or more U.S. cities, or acquiesce in major American casualties. Those North Korean nuclear forces could take out America’s 49,000 soldiers and sailors in Japan, too.

As known by RealityChek regulars, in the most immediate sense, the United States is in this predicament to begin with because neither South Korea nor Japan has fielded powerful enough conventional militaries to defeat North Korea without American help. In large measure, Japan has skimped on defense because Washington doesn’t want it to become a major military power once again – for fear the Japanese will revert back to their aggressive early 20^th century ways. But no such pressure has been exerted on Seoul. For decades, however, American leaders have decided that both a nuclear Japan and South Korea would be calamitous.

And worst of all, the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment – including the Mainstream Media – has worked overtime to hide these scary realities from the American people.

So what’s the good news? As reported in this Bloomberg piece, the United States will continue to develop a missile defense system aimed at protecting U.S. territory from the North’s nukes. Indeed, a new round of tests is “tentatively” scheduled for early next year.

But here’s the (really) bad news: Washington is nowhere near developing a missile defense system that can actually work. To be sure, Defense Department officials are expressing optimism that they’ve figured out how to fix the problems responsible for recent test failures. But even if this next test – and follow-ons – succeed, and even if their targets actually do approximate “real-world threats” (which they haven’t so far), defining success is awfully tricky given how much damage even one warhead striking the United States can do.

All of which means that, for the indefinite future, it will be American policy to keep the U.S. homeland exposed to a non-negligible threat of nuclear attack in order to protect countries more than wealthy enough to defend themselves. As I’ve acknowledged, there are some theoretically justifiable reasons for this strategy (e.g., both countries are vital trade partners, or a nuclear-armed Japan really would go berserk, or Washington is striking the right balance between deterring aggression and preserving peace in Asia and keeping Americans themselves safe). But it also remains clear that U.S. leaders refuse to acknowledge the real stakes – because they recognize that no benefits of protecting Asia can possibly exceed the harm of a nuclear warhead (or two, or three) exploding above U.S. territory, and that public opinion would explode in outrage if the truth were told.

We’ve still got some presidential debates – and a vice presidential face-off – coming up before Election Day. Is anyone confident that this issue will receive remotely as much attention as Alicia Machado?

Following Up: Growing Asia Nuclear Policy Risks Remain Hidden from Americans

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"The Interview", alliances, allies, deterrence, Donald Trump, extended deterrence, Following Up, Hillary Clinton, Japan, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, South Korea, Team America: World Police

If a longstanding policy U.S. foreign policy position strongly endorsed by the nation’s bipartisan political leadership was steadily becoming a major nuclear threat to the American homeland, and the mainstream media and chattering classes at best glossed over the threat, wouldn’t you start wondering if they were in cahoots with each other against the interests of the mass public – and dangerously so?

Well it’s hard to read the coverage of North Korea’s latest nuclear weapons tests and reasonably reach any other conclusion.

Over the last month, North Korea has fired missiles and set off underground nuclear explosions that revealed major progress toward the goal of developing nuclear weapons capable of hitting American territory. Yesterday’s bomb test prompted a statement by President Obama that condemned the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, and did refer to implications for the United States:

“”Today’s test, North Korea’s second this year, follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches, which North Korea claims are intended to serve as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons targeting the United States and our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan. As Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to safeguard the American people and ensure that the United States is leading the international community in responding to this threat and North Korea’s other provocations with commensurate resolve and condemnation.”

But he didn’t make clear the real reason that the rapidly emerging new North Korean nuclear capabilities endanger America. It’s not, as someone who knows the Pyongyang regime mainly from blackly comedic portrayals in Hollywood films might suppose, because its current leader and his father were homicidal maniacs insanely plotting global conquest or bent on triggering a worldwide nuclear holocaust. (Think Team America: World Police or The Interview.)

Not that anyone can dismiss this possibility with great confidence, given the North’s erratic behavior and how little we know about it. But from a purely strategic standpoint, if Pyongyang really is seeking world domination, unless a preemptive strike is seen as a promising option (and as reported in RealityChek, at least one respected defense consulting firm doesn’t agree), the United States is already doing everything that can plausibly be done to deter the threat. It’s maintained nuclear forces of its own fully able to wipe the North off the map, and whose threatened use would be credible because America’s own survival would be at stake.

And logically, but worrisomely, if Kim really is insane, and harbors suicidal tendencies, there’s literally no deterrence strategy with high odds of succeeding.

So it should be clear that an unprovoked intercontinental bolt from the blue is not what’s on the president’s mind, or those of other foreign policy specialists who are so alarmed by the latest news.

Instead, what Mr. Obama and the rest of the foreign policy establishment’s political, policy, and media wings fear is that North Korea’s improving forces threaten America’s decade’s long commitment to defend U.S allies in East Asia with nuclear weapons. Specifically, as RealityChek regulars know, a pledge that was arguably prudent when the North lacked any nuclear weapons, or still showed no potential of reaching the United States proper, has become anything but prudent if it could result in the destruction of an entire American city. Two. Or more.  

Worse, the North – as well as China – also has been making progress in building what strategy specialists call a secure retaliatory capability.  That means nuclear forces standing a good chance of remaining at least partly functional even if the United States tries to take it out. 

Current U.S. policy looks even less defensible given that America’s allies in the region have ample resources to build the militaries needed to repel any conventional attack by North Korea, and that Washington has long maintained its nuclear umbrella in order to prevent South Korea and Japan from going nuclear themselves. Inadequate allied military spending provides ever greater fuel for charges that American leaders are risking their own countrymen’s safety in order to protect defense deadbeats. And as even the establishment media has begun to report, the non-credibility of the United States vowing to incur nuclear risks on behalf of others has voices in allied countries more earnestly talking about their own nuclearization.

According to President Obama, America’s most sensible course of action is to reaffirm existing policy: “I restated to President Park [of South Korea} and Prime Minister Abe [of Japan] the unshakable U.S. commitment….to provide extended deterrence, guaranteed by the full spectrum of U.S. defense capabilities.” Translation into plain English: Despite the mounting threat to America itself, the nuclear umbrella remains up.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton believes that the North’s new steps require a “rethinking” of U.S. North Korea policy, but only in the sense of strengthening sanctions aimed at denuclearizing the North, and pursuing the kinds of negotiations that resulted in the deal to delay Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. She made sure to add that she would “back allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan,” an Associated Press account reported.

I would be the last person to insist that these positions are by definition out of bounds. Although I strongly disagree, it’s entirely legitimate to conclude that maintaining the (so far peaceful) status quo in East Asia is worth accepting some degree of risk for the American homeland. What should be out of bounds is Washington’s continuing determination to conceal these risks from the American people – with the cooperation of most of the Mainstream Media.

Even the few reports of the North Korea tests and their implications that both mentioned the increasing threat to the United States, along with some relationship to its alliance policy and to America’s deterrence strategy, did so only the most oblique, abstract ways. (See here and here for examples.) None of them explained that, when the North did develop intercontinental strike capabilities, it would remain American policy literally to risk Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago or New York or Washington for Tokyo and Seoul.

Again, the point is not that this risk shouldn’t be taken. It’s that no one has made the nuclear attack realities clear to the American people, and then asked them if they approve.

Of course, there has been one political figure who’s called America’s nuclear commitments to its allies into question. That’s Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. And of course, thanks to Mainstream Media coverage, we all know what a lunatic loose cannon he is.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Good Trump Defense Speech – but Good Enough?

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2016 election, defense, defense budget, deterrence, Donald Trump, foreign policy establishment, Madeleine Albright, Mainstream Media, military, nation-building, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Wilsonianism

Donald Trump has done it again! No, I’m not talking about the Republican presidential candidate blurting out a new insult or gaffe. I’m talking about yet another speech or set of remarks that has given the nation yet another opportunity to learn an important lesson about the essentials of a sound foreign policy.

Unfortunately, as in some previous instances, Trump didn’t capitalize adequately on this opportunity, and thereby sowed the seeds of confusion – especially in the ranks of a Mainstream Media too thoroughly imbued with and enthusiastic about establishment conventional wisdom to cover this subject objectively, let alone intelligently.

Trump’s latest chance to teach some badly needed diplomatic common sense came yesterday in his speech in Philadelphia on military readiness. Its two main points entailed a promise to increase American military spending greatly, and an attack on Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, as an out-of-control, indeed “trigger happy,” global interventionist.

Almost instinctively, the establishment media, along with numerous national security types I follow on Twitter, claimed to have caught Trump in a major contradiction. As two New York Times correspondents put it, the maverick tycoon repeated his “at times paradoxical approach of using fiery oratory to promise a military buildup and the immediate destruction of the Islamic State, while also rejecting the nation-building and interventionist instincts of George W. Bush’s administration.”

In other words, Trump is by and large proposing spending huge – and possibly unaffordable – sums to pay for a military that he doesn’t intend to use much. The clear implication: Could anything be more stupid and wasteful?

In a narrow sense, Times reporters Ashley Parker and Matthew Rosenberg committed the common but nonetheless inexcusable mistake of assuming that someone who opposes military or other forms of intervention anywhere must logically oppose them everywhere. And vice versa. It’s as if every area of the world or every situation faced by the United States presents threats or opportunities of exactly the same magnitude.

In a more fundamental sense, however, the Times‘ critique harkens back to a question posed by Clinton-era Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when she challenged the first Bush administration’s broadly circumspect approach to using force abroad: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” And this view is just as ditzy as the above all-or-nothing position.

To anyone even minimally schooled in national security strategy, it should have been embarrassingly and immediately clear that Albright hadn’t heard of the concept of deterrence. It’s been the overriding reason that countries, including the United States, have developed and maintained nuclear forces after America dropped atomic bombs in Japan in World War II.

But deterrence alone is also entirely valid justification for building and maintaining a strong conventional military. And it’s in no way intrinsically incompatible with the kind of relatively non-interventionist foreign policy instincts Trump has revealed. Indeed, as I have written, no approach to world affairs could make more sense for a country as fundamentally secure and economically self-reliant as the United States.

It’s entirely possible that Trump is wrong in his specific assessments of America’s most important international interests and how best to defend and promote them. But his suggestion that military strength has major value in and of itself, and that this value has no intrinsic bearing on how active or passive the nation should be in the international arena, is beyond informed criticism.

Trump did use in this speech the phrase “Peace through strength,” which in other circumstances would make the point nicely. Ditto for the follow-on claim that “President Obama and Hillary Clinton have also overseen deep cuts in our military, which only invite more aggression from our adversaries.” Similarly, he resolved “to deter, avoid and prevent conflict through our unquestioned military strength.”

But to an electorate and a foreign policy establishment and a national press corps accustomed to equating strength with interventionism, it wasn’t close to satisfactory. And Trump himself compounded the confusion by repeatedly referring to tactics and goals suggesting that he buys this idea, too. Hence his references to achieving “a stable, peaceful world with less conflict and more common ground”; to “promoting regional stability, and producing an easing of tensions in the world”; to “[making] new friends, [rebuilding] old alliances, and [bringing] new allies into the fold”; to promoting “gradual reform” in the terminally dysfunctional Middle East”; to “promoting our system and our government and our way of life as the best in the world…”

None of these goals is objectionable in and of itself. In the abstract, they’re of course admirable. But without the kinds of “When?”, “Where?”, and “How much?” questions he never asked, these objectives degenerate into the kind of grandiose, and even reckless, Wilsonianism that Trump’s previous attacks on “nation-building” have indicated he opposes.

Nor is it comforting to assume that Trump and his advisers stuck these stock phrases into the speech to assure voters that he’s solidly traditional in key respects, or to reach out to those conservatives more enamored with American global assertiveness. For such rhetoric always threatens to raise expectations and set the kinds of interventionist traps into which even the most cautious presidents have fallen. (Unless you think Lyndon Johnson relished the prospect of sending 500,000 American soldiers into Vietnam?)

Trump still has several weeks to flesh out his foreign policy approach more coherently and more sensibly. He could also wind up waiting to start staging teachable moments until he’s installed in the White House. But given the pace and unpredictability of world events, he shouldn’t assume that time is an ally in this respect.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Pitiful Media Defense of America’s Asia Strategy

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alliances, allies, Asia, Chung Min Lee, defense spending, deterrence, Donald Trump, Japan, Mainstream Media, non-tariff barriers, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, protectionism, South Korea, Trade, Washington Post, Yoichi Funabashi

It’s of course OK for the Washington Post op-ed page to run articles with which I disagree. It’s also OK – for a different reason – for the Post op-ed page to run mainly articles with which its editors or the paper’s owner agree. No media outlet is under any legal or moral obligation to serve as a completely open forum. (Although it would be nice if those with an obvious slant at least dropped the pretense.)

What’s much less OK is for the Post or any other paper to run op-ed articles that completely ignore major evidence and arguments that undermine their own conclusions, or that contain big internal contradictions. These articles may technically not amount to intentionally misleading readers. But as made clear by an offering in yesterday’s paper on America’s Asia policy, they come uncomfortably close.

The article, by a veteran Japanese journalist-turned-think tanker and a Korean academic Chung Min Lee, charges that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appears dangerously likely to support “a U.S. withdrawal or fundamentally reduced U.S. military presence in Asia [that] would not only undermine regional security; it would also ultimately weaken the United States at home and abroad.”

Among the leading points:

>Contrary to the insinuations of Trump and other Americans, Japan and Korea are not defense free riders;

>Both countries are committed to free trade, just like the United States; and

>Trump’s positions would represent a complete turnaround from the policies of President Obama, who has “demonstrated that credibility need not be purchased through force; it can come from articulating clear strategies that give other nations confidence the United States will follow through.”

Anyone remotely familiar with U.S.-Asia relations in recent decades will find these claims downright laughable. But for layfolks, here’s what authors Yoichi Funabashi and Chung Min Lee didn’t tell you – and what Washington Post op-ed editors allowed them to leave out:

>The best measure of whether an ally is a free rider is not, as Funabashi and Lee contend, whether it picks up some or even most of the expenses of hosting American forces on its soil. After all, these payments aren’t acts of foreign charity. Those U.S. military units are present first and foremost to defend those very countries. It’s true that American leaders have determined that this posture serves American interests, too. But its the allies themselves that unquestionably have the greatest stake in preserving their own security. Why aren’t they paying all the expenses of hosting the U.S. military. Isn’t it enough that American taxpayers have footed the entire bill for fielding and arming these forces in the first place?

Instead, the best measure of free rider status is whether allies’ defense spending is proportionate to the threats they face. According to the World Bank, for South Korea – which is located right next door to wildly belligerent North Korea, and only a little farther away from two huge neighbors with which it’s had a troubled history – the military budget amounted to 2.6 percent of its economy last year. And this figure had been falling for decades, even though the North Korean threat was obviously worsening. For Japan, defense spending as a share of the economy has been rising – largely out of concern of growing belligerence from both North Korea and China. But it still only represented one percent last year. Do these statistics really paint a picture of countries that have stepped up?

>Contrary to this Post op-ed, there’s little evidence that Japan and Korea deserve to be removed from the list of countries ranking as the world’s most protectionist. But don’t take my word for it – look at what President Obama’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has reported. Its latest survey on protectionist practices around the world devotes more pages to listing trade barriers in Japan and Korea than to nearly any other single country (as opposed to agglomerations that include big countries, like the European Union).

Worse, it’s clear that tariffs and non-tariff barriers remain high in Korea even though a U.S.-Korea free trade agreement promising to open the latter’s market significantly went into effect more than four years ago. As with Japan, with which Washington has negotiated dozens of purported market-opening agreements over a span of decades, the reason couldn’t be clearer to any informed trade policy student: The pervasive non-tariff trade barriers they maintain have provided the most effective protections and subsidies for their domestic producers. And because they’re developed and administered by powerful and highly secretive bureaucracies, they’re painfully difficult for outsiders even to identify, much less combat.

>Finally, it’s nothing less than astonishing for the Post to have published a piece lauding President Obama’s success in preserving America’s credibility with its security allies. For the paper has published the most detailed reporting on an idea conspicuously being mulled by the president that could pose the greatest threat to these relationships since their creation: his interest in declaring that the United States will never be the first participant in a military conflict to use nuclear weapons.

As is surely known by Funabashi and Lee – and by anyone on the Post op-ed staff that reads the paper – the threat of using nuclear weapons has been central to America’s alliance strategy in both Europe and Asia for decades. The idea has been and still is that these arms would be the free world’s great equalizer versus Soviet, Russian, Chinese, and North Korean adversaries that have fielded conventional military forces that Washington and its allies have decided would be too expensive to match, much less exceed.

Why should they know this so well? At the least because Post columnist Josh Rogin laid it all out in a piece all of four days before the op-ed by Funabashi and Lee. Further, Rogin reported that “Diplomats from allied countries argued that if the United States takes a nuclear first strike off the table, the risk of a conventional conflict with countries such as North Korea, China and Russia could increase. Regimes that might refrain from a conventional attack in fear of nuclear retaliation would calculate the risks of such an attack differently.”

It’s possible that Rogin’s reporting was completely off base, and that the allies are all on board with an impending U.S. “no first use” policy. It’s also possible that even if Rogin’s coverage is on target, the allies are wrong, as insisted by some American arms control advocates quoted by Rogin. (Although if this is true, that logically wouldn’t mean that the allies are thrilled with Obama or still believers in American defense guarantees.) But why on earth didn’t the Post op-ed staff ask Funabashi and Lee to at least address the issue?

The Mainstream Media have been under such fire lately that its members have been spending more and more time contending that its record, resources, and devotion to quality mean that alternative media can’t be remotely adequate substitutes. The more slipshod, tendentious, pro-status quo columns like Funabashi’s and Lee’s that these news organizations serve up, the weaker these increasingly controversial claims become.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Asia Nuclear Dangers Remain a U.S. Policy Blind Spot

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, deterrence, extended deterrence, Japan, Matthew Kroenig, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, South China Sea, South Korea, Syria, The National Bureau of Asian Research

Eagle-eye RealityChek followers may have noticed the lack of a post Wednesday. Here’s my “note from home.” I spent much of the day doing something I hadn’t done for quite a while: attend a policy conference in downtown Washington, D.C.

I’ve been avoiding such events lately (unless I’m invited to speak) because usually I know ahead of time what all the participants are certain to say. (Yes, the policy scene in the nation’s capitol is indeed that stale, at least in the fields I know best.) So why waste time at such utterly predictable, formulaic exercises?

But last Wednesday’s event, sponsored by the private The National Bureau of Asian Research, was a little different. It dealt in large part with a subject I’ve posted on several times: the dramatic improvement in Chinese and North Korean nuclear weapons capabilities and what it could mean for American alliance strategy in the region and America’s own security. I wasn’t familiar with the speakers. And the foreign policy establishment has been pretty silent on this issue so far, so it was a chance to sample some representative views.

I’m glad to report that the presentations, especially by the lead speaker, Georgetown University political scientist Matthew Kroenig, helped me refine my thinking on these matters further. But they didn’t prompt any significant changes and, if anything, further convinced me that the nation’s foreign policy professionals still need a major wake-up call on how U.S. strategy in Asia is increasing the nation’s vulnerability to nuclear attack.

To review quickly: Since the end of World War II, the United States has promised to use nuclear weapons if necessary defend allies in Asia – specifically Japan and South Korea – from aggression. That strategy arguably made lots of sense when America possessed the world’s only nuclear weapons, and when, even after this monopoly was lost, it enjoyed a major nuclear edge over regional rivals. After all, Washington could not only hope to prevail in any conflict. It could reasonably hope to deter any such confrontation through the ability to threaten adversaries with nuclear destruction while keeping the American homeland completely safe.

Today, the strategic situation in Asia is substantially different. The United States retains substantial nuclear superiority over China and especially North Korea. But in addition to continuing to close the gap, as I’ve been reporting for years, both China and North Korea have made important strides towards developing what the specialists call secure retaliatory capabilities. That is, they’re developing forces that can be mobile enough, or easily enough hidden (mainly by putting them on submarines), to make sure that Beijing or Pyongyang can hit American targets with nuclear-tipped missiles as soon as Washington brings its own nuclear forces into play. As a result, U.S. leaders could (understandably) be deterred from intervening in Asian conflicts for fear literally of losing Los Angeles, or Denver, or….

At the conference, the presentations did deal with these developments, but they were unmistakably treated largely as abstract, long-range hypotheticals – not as concrete challenges bearing down on America very quickly. Just look at the event’s title: “Approaching Critical Mass: Asia’s Multipolar Nuclear Future.” Nothing in it about the United States. I tried to bring the discussion closer to earth by asking whether they thought that any American president would defend Asian allies knowing that the explosion of even a single nuclear warhead over a major U.S. city was a live possibility.

Georgetown’s Kroenig responded and made some strong points. First, he noted, American leaders have continued the policy of “extended deterrence” in Asia despite the Chinese and North Korean improvements, and the peace has been kept, meaning that Beijing and Pyongyang apparently remain deterred. Second, he pointed out, it’s not beyond America’s capacity to strengthen its own nuclear forces, and at least restore some of its diminished nuclear margin – even to the point of restoring high confidence of taking out rival nuclear forces in a preemptive strike.

Third, as Kroenig correctly observed, deterrence calculations are usually not black and white, either-or propositions. In America’s case, once it lost that monopoly on delivering nuclear weapons across oceans, it’s experienced some vulnerability to nuclear attack. As a result, the real challenge U.S. leaders face is continuing to convince potential enemies that nothing they could conceivably hope to gain from attacking American allies could approach what they could conceivably lose.

But if I’d had the chance to follow up aggressively (which is considered bad form at such events – another reason I’ve been passing them up), I would have made the following responses:

First, although both China and North Korea have so refrained from making dramatic military moves in Asia, that’s not to say that they’ve been deterred. After all, the North keeps conducting nuclear weapons tests. And with increasing boldness, the Chinese keep asserting territorial claims in the East and especially the South China Sea. Moreover, as I’ve reported, the Japanese and South Koreans seem less and less impressed with the credibility of America’s commitments, and seem increasingly eager to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.

Second, even if abundant resources suddenly became available, it’s far from certain that more and better U.S. nuclear forces will restore enough American superiority to offset Chinese and North Korean gains – much less be able to threaten their nuclear forces adequately. As I reported in May, a highly regarded defense consulting firm has recently contended that “the United States and its allies are already at a point where they cannot guarantee the complete removal of the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack.” And without “complete removal,” Pyongyang could still have Washington over a barrel.   

Third, precisely because of this risk, and precisely because Washington has never leveled with the American people about the (growing) dangers of its Asia strategy, there’s a real chance that U.S. leaders could find themselves in a showdown with Asian adversaries without the full support of the public. President Obama found out how painful that experience could be – and the kind of hit American credibility could suffer – when he backed down from his threat to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons.  Imagine the impact of an Asian nuclear crisis taking this turn.  

In fact, as I remarked to some fellow conference attendees as we were filing out, if Americans were fully aware of their leaders’ Asia intentions, they’d probably get angry enough to vote cast their presidential ballots for a rank political and policy amateur with an apparently hot-headed personality. I was only half-kidding.

Following Up: Events Keep Vindicating Trump – & Discrediting Obama – on Asia

Tags

2016 election, alliances, Asia, China, deterrence, Following Up, foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Japan, Kim Jong Un, national security, North Korea, Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, Obama. Donald Trump, South Korea, Stratfor, submarines, The Guardian

President Obama has grown fond of insinuating that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is largely responsible for much of the turmoil or instability spreading throughout major world regions. And as recent Asia-related events keep demonstrating, it’s Trump that has a much better handle on these challenges than a president whose response is little more than whistling in the dark.

Mr. Obama has just continued his attacks on Trump’s foreign policy remarks at a press conference held at a summit in Japan of the leaders of seven of the world’s largest economies, telling reporters that world leaders are “rattled” by Trump, “and for good reason….a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe.”

Given the Asian setting, the president – and those world leaders expressing these fears – surely had in mind Trump’s indication that the United States might be better off letting America’s allies in the region (namely Japan and South) provide for their own security, even if that entails developing nuclear weapons.

As I’ve repeatedly written, if implemented, Trump’s suggestion would indeed represent a sea-change in a regional and global strategy pursued by the United States since the end of World War II. But as I’ve also repeatedly written, for all the alarm they’ve expressed about Trump’s comments, Japan and South Korea are already showing signs of determination to develop their own nuclear forces.

The reason? Because Chinese and North Korean nuclear capabilities have become so formidable, that American promises to defend Asian allies with nuclear weapons if necessary now create the risk of exposing the U.S. homeland to nuclear attack. And as a result, the Asians have understandably lost a lot of faith in these American commitments.

Luckily, Mr. Obama will be in office only a few months more, because these developments and dangers seem to be news to him. But recent events are reminding once again that America can’t afford its next leader to be this clueless. For signs keep multiplying that Washington is rapidly losing the ability to solve this problem by knocking out these Chinese and North Korean nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike.

For example, even as the president was trashing Trump, Britain’s Guardian newspaper was reporting that China – as the U.S. Defense Department has long expected – is on the verge of sending its nuclear missile submarines sailing throughout the vast Pacific Ocean. This matters tremendously because submarine-launched missiles represent a country’s best bet for a secure nuclear deterrent – i.e., nuclear weapons that an enemy can’t knock out before they’re launched or at any point during a nuclear conflict. As a result, they present that enemy with a virtual guarantee that initial nuclear attacks (like those Washington is pledged to launch to protect its Asian allies) will provoke equally destructive retaliation, and therefore make those initial attacks much less likely.

Submarine-launched missile capability per se is nothing new for China. But so far, its effectiveness apparently has been hamstrung by the fact that Chinese subs operate noisily enough for the United States to track them, and by the limited ranges of these vessels, which have made their discovery even less challenging. Moreover, the nuclear-tipped missiles carried by China’s subs still can’t fly far enough to hit American targets unless fired from mid-Pacific locations.

It seems that these problems haven’t been completely solved, but according to The Guardian, Beijing feels that enough progress has been made to be actively planning deep ocean voyages for the subs sooner rather than later. And whatever ongoing and future advances are made on vessel range, missile range, and noise will mean that China’s nuclear submarine force will have more and more of the vast Pacific to hide in and attack from. So an American president believing that nuclear threats can keep China at bay in, say, a South China Sea confrontation, may wind up having his or her bluff called.

North Korea’s nuclear forces may have passed a critical threshold, too, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Stratfor – which is bad news for the United States and all of Northeast Asia given major questions about the rationality of its leader, Kim Jong Un. Stratfor recently examined the question of whether U.S. Military forces could destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear force if need be, and contended that the requisite American firepower certainly exists. But it also pointed to two crucial complications:

“First, we simply do not have a comprehensive or precise picture of the North Korean nuclear program, especially when it comes to the number of weapons and delivery vehicles — we do not know for sure where they are located or how well they are protected.

“Second, we have no way of knowing just how good the U.S. intelligence picture really is when it comes to the North Korean nuclear program. Predicting the likelihood of a U.S. strike is difficult to do when the decision to carry out an attack would depend heavily on the degree of confidence the United States places in its intelligence.”

Stratfor’s overall conclusion: Because the North’s forces are likely to grow in numbers and sophistication, unless U.S. leaders use their own nuclear forces in an strike, “the United States and its allies are already at a point where they cannot guarantee the complete removal of the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack.” And as a result, Washington can no longer guarantee that American territory will remain unscathed if a conflict with the North goes nuclear.

President Obama seems determined to pretend that the dangers created by these developments for U.S. national security simply don’t and can’t ever exist. Judging by her dismissive comments, likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton – his former Secretary of State – seems to agree, Trump is facing up to this news and its full implications. And he’s the dangerous one?