We hate to agree with Donald Trump on a debate rant, but he had a point here:
What’s more frightening than Iran developing a nuclear bomb? That North Korea already has several and is working feverishly on ways to deliver them.
While the world has focused on the pending six-nation deal with Iran, scant attention has been paid to North Korea’s increasing efforts to become a full member of the nuclear weapons club.
But North Korea will not be ignored. So Tuesday, it announced the restart of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which supposedly had been shuttered since 2007 as part of an agreement involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas.
It also said it’s ready to use nuclear weapons against the United States at “any time.”
Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s — oh, let’s say eccentric supreme leader, has been viewed by many as a cartoonish dictator whose fits of rhetorical bombast are just meant to leverage the nuclear threat for better trade deals and world status. We’ve said as much. But evidence is mounting that Kim needs to be taken seriously, and that North Korea is a serious threat to world peace.
Now. Right now. Consider:
U.S. spy satellites confirm North Korean officials’ claim that scientists there have been “steadily improving the levels of nuclear weapons with various missions in quality and quantity as required by the prevailing situation.”
And on Monday, North Korea confirmed plans to launch a long-range rocket for “space and weather research.” Pardon our skepticism, but we concur with the widely held view that it’s a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.
Shane Smith, a senior research fellow and North Korea expert at the National Defense University, estimates in a paper published on the website 38 North that North Korea has “enough fissile material to build anywhere from six to 30 nuclear weapons” and that it is “poised to grow its stockpile, perhaps dramatically, over the coming years.”
He says North Korea has conducted three increasingly powerful nuclear tests since 2006 and has made significant investments in creating a second-strike capability. This strongly suggests a policy tilt from posturing to actual development of war strategies.
If that weren’t enough, a number of North Korea watchers believe Kim plans to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party on Oct. 10 with a literal bang.
We don’t know how to stem North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and neither does Donald Trump. But whatever we’ve been doing hasn’t worked, and a crisis more imminent than Iran could be brewing.
