I don't buy this tale of disaster if America strikes North Korea:
But a true accounting of those costs would also include the likelihood that the U.S.-South Korea alliance would be shattered, along with the regional stability the United States spent 70 years trying to build. The global economy would be thrown into disarray; America would be on the hook for untold billions in reconstruction and refugee assistance. China would then move to replace the United States as the responsible regional leader.
Assuming America either gets South Korea to cooperate with a strike campaign or that the strike goes well and removes the nuclear threat against South Korea, why would the act of striking North Korea "shatter" the US-South Korea alliance?
Why would a strike campaign that doesn't escalate to war shatter the regional stability we've tried to build? Wouldn't removing North Korea's nuclear option stabilize things? Is the author saying that a North Korea pursuing nukes and a China staking out the South China Sea, claiming the East China Sea islands, and threatening to invade Taiwan doesn't destabilize the situation already?
And why would the global economy be thrown into disarray? North Korea has a negligible place in the global economy and the only thing we might miss is their cyber-thievery and ability to sell nuclear weapons to buyers. The only way the global economy gets hammered is if the strike escalates to a US-China fight.
As for untold billions to deal with refugees and help rebuild North Korea from decades of communist economic ineptitude and political cruelty, that assumes North Korea collapses due to the strike. If so, that's a price worth paying over several decades (and others have motive to spend for that, too) to end the North Korean nuclear threat, I say.
Pray tell, just how does an American-led war against North Korea allow China--which would have proved incapable of either reining in their little pet nuclear psycho or of stopping the American demonstration of power--become the "responsible" regional leader? Just who follows China in those circumstances?
And if China intervenes to defend that gulag with a UN seat and nukes, and doesn't get slammed around in the process, that is what will build Chinese regional leadership? Really?
Is continued America leadership in the region really going to thrive if North Korea goes nuclear?
Look, I'm not arguing that striking North Korea is risk-free. Things can go wrong--under any of the options. I freely admit I don't know what the best course is. And I don't even know what the least bad option is.
I sure don't know what the heck that author is talking about, however.
