Military Force Remains an Option With North Korea, Bolton Says

President Joe Biden last week made his most extensive foreign-policy remarks since taking office, speaking virtually to a G-7 meeting and the annual Munich Security Conference. Despite its worldwide proliferation threat, North Korea’s nuclear program went unmentioned, continuing its near invisibility under the new administration.

One reason for Biden’s reticence might be the pressure from the international left and others to reject three decades of bipartisan U.S. policy ostensibly aiming to denuclearize North Korea. While diplomatic tactics, focus and priority varied considerably under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, they all stressed that Pyongyang’s quest for deliverable nuclear weapons was unacceptable.

Unfortunately, they all produced the same result, namely the North’s continued progress toward an arsenal. During these long decades, we repeatedly heard that using force to keep the world’s most dangerous weapons away from the world’s most dangerous regimes was premature, provocative and unnecessary.

Now, some critics assert that because Pyongyang has essentially developed deliverable nukes, we should abandon denuclearization as unrealistic and unfeasible. The U.S. and its allies must instead accept a nuclear North Korea, working to contain its menace, as they say (in a facile analogy) the West did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Force must now be entirely off the table. Parallel recommendations have been made about Iran’s nuclear efforts.

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