Is it time to attack North Korea?

Now is it time to attack North Korea, which just tested an alleged hydrogen bomb and is working ostentatiously on missiles able to hit North America? The answer may be “No.” But if so, as people are fond of noting about answering “Yes,” it may have disastrous consequences.

A “decapitating” strike at Pyongyang could fail to kill the top leaders, destroy their nuclear facilities and weapons, or cripple their conventional army, or could do it too slowly to prevent — as British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson just put it — the South Korean capital of Seoul from being “vaporized.” Either way, it could also lead to an unmanageable confrontation with the People’s Republic of China. But there are also enormous drawbacks to letting the world see the spectacle of the United States being deterred by North Korea, not, as one might expect, the other way around.

A nuclear-armed North Korea might still be less awful than the alternatives. But let us be clear that standing by while it completes its drive for effective weapons of mass destruction means, first, admitting that three generations of pious talk about non-proliferation was just hot air, since if Pyongyang with nukes isn’t a major issue, nothing would be. And we must also be prepared to see North Korea followed in short order by Japan and possibly South Korea, followed by various other dominoes including Iran.

The problem isn’t just the immediate threat that a nuclear North Korea poses to its neighbours. It’s that if the U.S. is not willing or not able to stop Kim Jong Un going nuclear, it is plainly not willing or not able to stop anyone from doing it, including Iran, where sages also claim the hyperpower is helpless. Which raises an even broader concern.

If the United States is not prepared to act now with the extraordinary preponderance of force it possesses all the way up the “ladder of escalation,” or cannot manage a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, including its massed artillery forces holding Seoul hostage, then its enormous conventional power is essentially useless and everybody will know it.

America’s military has difficulty fighting “irregular” enemies like the Taliban once key conventional objectives like Kabul have been seized. Which I grant is difficult; guerrilla war notoriously is. But if it also cannot take out the regular armed forces of a third-rate power — its artillery as obvious and vulnerable a target for cruise missiles, fuel-air explosives and such weapons as a strategist could dream of — then what are its army, navy and air force for?

They aren’t there to prevent a massive conventional attack by, say, China or Russia. The American nuclear arsenal does that job. And they do not exist to provide security against such an attack if the supposed dream of nuclear disarmament is ever achieved, because then the bad guys will build nuclear weapons secretly, or possibly with open contempt, and then blackmail us into surrender.

Pacifists may say all force is useless. But what have the rest of us to offer?

Many people including Boris Johnson have called for a combination of diplomacy and sanctions. But let’s be realistic here: This approach has been in place for nearly a quarter-century and has failed, totally and humiliatingly. North Korea has worked relentlessly and often flagrantly toward genuine nuclear capacity, that is, reliable warheads atop dependable missiles. And it is not going to stop now unless forced to.

It is habitual to call the North Korean leadership insane. And not without reason. But people are also fond of the maxim, unreliably attributed to Einstein, that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So relying on diplomacy, sanctions and other non-military options means you are either insane or deceitfully acquiescing in a nuclear North Korea while pretending not to.

In Yes Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby and a colleague summarize the British Foreign Office fourstep approach to a crisis. First, deny that anything is happening. Then admit something is happening but say it doesn’t matter. Then admit something is happening and does matter but claim nothing can be done. Finally say something was happening and did matter, and something could have been done but now it is too late. But it was intended as satire, not advice.

I am not in the habit of quoting Hitler except to analyze aggressive genocidal evil. But he did once say whoever starts a war enters a dark room. And as I have commented before, the fact that Hitler, and Stalin, were evil does not mean they were stupid; if only they had been, we would not know their names.

So yes, attacking North Korea is risky. But not attacking also carries serious risks, which are exacerbated not reduced by pretending they don’t exist.

So if not now, when? And if never, why? North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un holds a meeting of the ruling party’s presidium on the weekend.