The excerpt below is from an opinion article written by Dr. Peter Pry for The Washington, which originally appeared on March 26, 2019. The original article in its entirety can be read here.
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
After North Korea’s H-Bomb test in September 2017, some analysts, myself included, urged the White House to consider possible military options, using conventional surgical strikes to denuclearize North Korea quickly, while minimizing escalatory risks.
Decades of failed talks, and the failed Hanoi nuclear summit proves again, North Korea will not denuclearize peacefully.
Dictator Kim Jong-un’s game is to buy time through pretend negotiations to build enough ICBMs so nuclear-armed North Korea, with a Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) relationship with the United States, becomes irreversible.
Economic sanctions designed to pressure North Korea’s denuclearization peacefully never worked, and are not working now. According to a recent United Nations report obtained by the Associated Press, leaked in the UK Guardian (March 11, 2019):
“United Nations experts are investigating possible violations of UN sanctions on North Korea in about 20 countries, from alleged clandestine nuclear procurement in China to arms brokering in Syria and military cooperation with Iran, Libya and Sudan. The expert panel’s 66-page report to the security council also detailed the appearance in North Korea of a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Mercedes-Benz limousines and Lexus LX 570 all-wheel-drives in violation of a ban on luxury goods. And it noted a trend in North Korea’s evasion of financial sanctions by using cyberattacks to ‘illegally force the transfer of funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges.’”
Read the original article in its entirety here
