Real Clear Defense:
While applying the pressure of sanctions, the Trump Administration has engaged in direct talks with Kim Jong-un with the objective of complete and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula within two and a half years. This is already the third iteration of a U.S.-North Korean rapprochement with a third-generation dictator, and success has eluded us in the past two.
However, missing in the current dialogue is the urgency to reach détente based on mutually assured destruction. America’s security can no longer be held hostage by nuclear blackmail.
President Trump, on August 8, 2017, delivered a chilling message: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” The President’s deliberate imagery of American arsenals capable of annihilating North Korea was the condition precedent to dialogue on denuclearization.
