America Must Move Past Its “Sputnik” Moment on North Korea—Or Else

Harry J. Kazianis

Security, Asia

Washington should face reality and accept it. We should make it our policy to manage and reduce the North Korean threat.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: North Korea has enough nuclear weapons to kill millions of people in minutes. And short of finding a way to convince Pyongyang to give those weapons up, that reality may not change for decades to come—if ever.

Yes, that is terrifying, but it is a reality.

And that’s not all. North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un also holds a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that could also kill hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, at a moment’s notice, as well as thousands of artillery tubes that could start a 9/11-style crisis hundreds of times over in minutes. And just like Kim’s nuclear weapons arsenal, if we can’t come up with an incentive structure that Washington can accept politically and militarily—as well as a deal that Pyongyang finds appealing—none of this will change.

Yes, that is also terrifying, but it is also a reality.

Now is the time to face these realities head-on if—and most likely when—denuclearization proves to be impossible. We must accept these terrifying truths for what they are, and craft policies to mitigate the threat coming from North Korea, as opposed to continuing to play an increasingly dangerous game of foreign policy fantasyland.