TOBIN HARSHAW: A strike against North Korea is unthinkable. Unless ...
'If you set a date final by which we have to see a solution or we will intervene, then you've got time to try to minimize the damage to Seoul through defensive measures'
For any number of foreign-policy pundits, nonproliferation zealots, late-night chatterbots and enterprising T-shirt vendors, the Donald Trump-Kim Jong-un feud has been the gift that keeps on giving career advancement. Yet for all the debate over how to deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons, there are really only three options. The first, to which the vast majority of national security and military professionals are resigned, is remarkably unsatisfying: live with it. North Korea apparently already has a small arsenal of functioning warheads and its missile tests show an ability to reach the continental U.S. It's too late to turn back the clock. Let's try to keep Kim in a box and focus on not getting into the same pickle with Iran. (Although some of us think that's inevitable as well.)The second is to reinvent the wheel and come up with a form of statesmanship that will succeed where decades of other policies have not. Bill Clinton tried carrots (oil and aid). George W. Bush tried s...
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