Trump has options, but none of them is good
washington — Sanctions on North Korea have been tried, and failed. Serious negotiations seem like a pipedream. And any military strike would almost surely bring mass devastation and horrific civilian casualties.
The Trump administration’s options are going from bad to worse as Kim Jong Un’s military marches ever closer to being able to strike the US mainland with nuclear weapons. Just as President Donald Trump seeks to show global resolve after the North’s most powerful nuclear test, his leverage is limited.
“He is begging for war,” US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said of the North Korean leader on Monday at the UN Security Council, where diplomats were called into emergency session despite the Labor Day holiday in the US.
Haley called for exhausting “all diplomatic means to end this crisis.” But to those who tried and failed over a decade-plus to resolve it, there appear to be few such means that haven’t already been tried — and tried again. What has changed is the sense of urgency, and the growing view among national security analysts that it may be time to abandon “denuclearisation” and accept North Korea into the nuclear club.
Short of allowing Pyongyang’s weapons programs to advance, Trump’s options all appear to be variations on what’s been considered before:
The US military for years has had a full range of contingency plans prepared for potential strikes on the North to try to disrupt its nuclear program.
But over the years, the military options have consistently been viewed as unworkable, owing to the sheer horror that would ensue if North Korea retaliated — as would be expected — by striking South Korea. The North Koreans have massive military assets stockpiled on what is the world’s most heavily fortified border.
Trump on Saturday declared on Twitter that the US was considering “stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.” That would be a dramatic escalation of the longstanding US strategy.
But many countries do business with North Korea — especially China, a top US trading partner and economic behemoth. Cutting off trade with China, not to mention the others, would devastate the US economy and be incredibly difficult to enforce. Countless American businesses would be shuttered or hard hit, eliminating jobs along with them. A total trade shutdown aside, the US has worked for years to squeeze Pyongyang financially and encouraged others to do the same — especially China.
In a diplomatic victory for the Trump administration, the UN last month approved sweeping new sanctions targeting roughly onethird of the North’s economy, with China’s support. But the latest nuclear test and recent missile tests suggest Kim is undeterred by those sanctions. — AP