North Korea has been front and center in the news media lately, as Kim Jong Un has made no qualms about pursuing its nuclear capabilities.
Kim Jong Un has threatened the United States saying that if the U.S. were to attack it, they would respond with nuclear weapons. In the face of the threats and tests of their missiles, President Donald Trump responded strongly.
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” President Donald Trump said. “They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
Trump’s comments have been slammed as incendiary by his political opposition as well as some foreign powers, but have been supported by others.
North Korea has recently tested its missile technology and analysts say they can hit targets like Guam and possibly U.S. cities like Chicago and Washington. They have announced plans to test missiles by firing as many as four at Guam. What’s even more alarming, analysts say they have developed a smaller nuclear weapon which has the destructive power of the much bigger weapons used in Japan during WWII. Add to this, North Korea has a large submarine fleet and it seems to present a clear and present danger to the United States and its allies.
Pyongyang has made major advances in weapons in recent years and shown a willingness to use its submarines for offensive military actions. March marked the seventh anniversary of the sinking of South Korea’s Cheonan navy ship by torpedo, killing 46 sailors and it wasn’t the first time the North encroached South Korean waters.
Kim Jong Un already has around 70-90 submarines. As he builds and deploys more, he will strain allied monitoring efforts.
Serving in the U.S. Army as a Nuclear, Biological, Chemical NCO and instructor, I am well aware of the outcome of using nuclear weapons. For many years of my service, we had a Cold War with Russia and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction when it came to using the weapons, which was a deterrent. Now, with threats like North Korea, there is a clear threat to the citizenry of the United States from smaller countries making the landscape quite unpredictable.
What should the response be to North Korean threats? Do we let them continue to develop their capabilities? That doesn’t seem wise to me. I surely don’t want World War III, but we can’t sit still like a door mat waiting while volatile leaders threaten.
Should President Trump have responded with more rhetoric? I wouldn’t have, but what’s done is done. I think President Trump has had a problem with public statements throughout his presidency. The U.S. has the most powerful military in the world. While we were once isolationists, with today’s global economy that’s no longer an option.
I would have responded by saying we were analyzing the threat, using all the resources at our disposal and if it became clear we had to act we will do so. The government’s first job is to protect the citizens of the United States and President Trump doesn’t need approval to do so.
Steve Warner can be contacted at news@smithvillereview.com