Is the wolf really here, this time?

Throughout my long lifetime, Democrats have warned of disaster every time war threatened, most notably and most absurdly at the time of Bush the Elder's war with Saddam.

But this time, maybe the warnings are accurate.

Maybe.

Nicholas Kristof

If there was a message in North Korea’s launch of a new missile capable of reaching anywhere in the United States, it was that America’s strategy toward that country is failing — and that war may be looming.

The American public is far too complacent about the possibility of a war with North Korea, one that could be incomparably bloodier than any U.S. war in my lifetime. 

One assessment suggests that one million people could die on the first day.

“If we have to go to war to stop this, we will,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told CNN after the latest missile test. 

“We’re headed toward a war if things don’t change.”

President Trump himself has said he stands ready to “totally destroy” North Korea. 

His national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, says Trump “is willing to do anything necessary” to prevent North Korea from threatening the U.S. with nuclear weapons — which is precisely what Kim Jong-un did.

One lesson from history: When a president and his advisers say they’re considering a war, take them seriously.

And this is noteworthy.

The problem is twofold. First, the U.S. goal for North Korea — complete denuclearization — is implausible. 

Second, our strategy of economic sanctions is ineffective against an isolated regime that earlier accepted the death by famine of perhaps 10 percent of its population.

. . . .

This problem is not Trump’s fault, and he’s right that previous administrations (back to the first President George Bush’s in the late 1980s) have mostly kicked the can down the road. 

He’s also right that we’re running out of road, now that North Korea has shown the ability to send a missile some 8,000 miles, putting all of the U.S. within its theoretical range.


(We may not be vulnerable yet. 

North Korea may not be able to attach a nuclear warhead to the missile so that it could survive the heat and friction of re-entering the atmosphere. 

But if it doesn’t have that capacity yet, it’s making swift progress toward that goal. 

It’s important to stop North Korea from the final testing needed to be confident of its ability to strike the U.S.)

. . . .

Hawks say that the continued American restraint has fostered a perception in North Korea that the U.S. is a paper tiger, and frankly there’s something to that. I worry that the U.S. and North Korea are both overconfident. 

On my recent visit to North Korea, officials repeatedly said that with their bunkers and tunnels, and ability to strike back, they could not only survive a nuclear war with the U.S., but would even prevail.


In Washington, there’s sometimes a similar delusion that a war would be over in a day after the first barrage of American missiles. 

Remember that tiny Serbia withstood more than two months of NATO bombing in 1999 before agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo; North Korea is incomparably more prepared for enduring and waging war.