“We have kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left.”: Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
Ambassador Haley is correct, of course.
That can was kicked from the time Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton conspired to hand North Korea nuclear capability in return for a promise the country would only use it for peaceful means to now, when North Korea is thisclose to launching nuclear weapons, and telling us in so many words it intends to do just that, and to “reduce the USA to ashes”. There is nowhere else to kick it.
So what do we do now?
President Trump has announced that he may summarily cut off trade with all countries that do business with North Korea. This specifically means China, which exported about $3 billion dollars of goods to North Korea last year (comprising roughly 90% of North Korea’s total trade) , but almost $500 billion dollars of goods to the USA.
That is no idle threat. And it is going to anger the communist gods in Beijing. But as Ed Morrissey says in his illuminating article for hotair.com,
A trade war beats a shooting war, if it comes down to that. And it’s rapidly coming down to that, thanks to Beijing’s failure to rein in their client state in Pyongyang.
Will President Trump’s threat work? Will China – the one country in the world that kim jung-un might pay attention to – now put the screws to North Korea?
Let’s hope against hope that the answer is yes.
But if the answer is no, and President Trump is forced to go in a different direction, let’s also remember who created the conditions has been forced to react to.
Why do people think that China has that kind of “control” over NK? Isn’t China just as vulnerable as everyone else to NK weapons? We would have to believe Kim was rational in order think any country can control what he does. I for one don’t believe China can stop him from going down this road and I think China knows it. Why else would China let this go as far as it has already?
Our only hope is that China and the rest of the world openly sign on to using force to stop NK.
That they all agree the only way a military solution can succeed without huge civilian casualties in surrounding countries would be a massive strike that makes certain NK is unable to retaliate.