Good news: Benghazi liar and former national security adviser Susan Rice says we can tolerate North Korean nuclear weapons. Yes, because Kim Jong-un is such a rational actor—said by no one. Well, I take that back; Rice thinks so. Oh, and as for tolerance, she thinks North Korea is just like the Soviet Union, so all should be fine, right? Here’s her op-ed in The New York Times:
The national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, said last week that if North Korea “had nuclear weapons that can threaten the United States, it’s intolerable from the president’s perspective.” Surely, we must take every reasonable step to reduce and eliminate this threat. And surely there may be circumstances in which war is necessary, including an imminent or actual attack on our nation or our allies.
But war is not necessary to achieve prevention, despite what some in the Trump administration seem to have concluded. History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea — the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
It will require being pragmatic.
First, though we can never legitimize North Korea as a nuclear power, we know it is highly unlikely to relinquish its sizable arsenal because Mr. Kim deems the weapons essential to his regime’s survival. The North can now reportedly reach United States territory with its ICBMs. The challenge is to ensure that it would never try.
[…]
Second, to avoid blundering into a costly war, the United States needs to immediately halt the reckless rhetoric. John Kelly, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, must assert control over the White House, including his boss, and curb the Trump surrogates whipping up Cuban missile crisis fears.
Third, we must enhance our antimissile systems and other defenses, and those of our allies, which need our reassurances more than ever.
Fourth, we must continue to raise the costs to North Korea of maintaining its nuclear programs. Ratcheting up sanctions, obtaining unfettered United Nations authority to interdict suspect cargo going in or out of the North, increasing Pyongyang’s political isolation and seeding information into the North that can increase regime fragility are all-important elements of a pressure campaign.
Finally, we must begin a dialogue with China about additional efforts and contingencies on the peninsula, and revive diplomacy to test potential negotiated agreements that could verifiably limit or eliminate North Korea’s arsenal.
Rational, steady American leadership can avoid a crisis and counter a growing North Korean threat. It’s past time that the United States started exercising its power responsibly.
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Granted, Rice makes good points about the cost of the war. There are 200,000 Americans (military personnel, their families, and other expats) living in South Korea, with an additional 40,000 in Japan. Of course, we should enhance our missile defense and ramp up sanctions. Yet, this whole notion that the Obama administration is the beacon for foreign policy is a joke. Lady, we tried it your way—and the world is on fire. You did nothing concerning North Korea. You held Yemen as a blueprint for future counterterror operations, only for the nation to descend into a bloody civil war. In Syria, paralysis by analysis allowed President Bashar al-Assad to continue his brutal campaign against his own people, while the Obama administration did nothing. Then, they allowed the Russians to re-enter the Middle East, going against five decades of foreign policy doctrine aimed at keeping them out. Oh, and they’re allies of Assad. You think they were ever going to sign off on a mission objective that seeks to remove him from power? No. And I think the Obama administration knew that, but for everyone else, it looks like they were doing something. It was all for the participation sticker for them.
After Benghazi, Susan Rice, then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.—went on live television multiple times, pulling the Full Ginsberg, and lied to the American people. It was not spontaneous. It was no due to an anti-Muslim YouTube video. It was a planned and deliberate terrorist attack, but the Obama White House had to run interference because Obama was on the stump saying how al-Qaeda was on the run; an affiliated group executed the attack. Also, it was in the waning days of the 2012 campaign and this issue plays strongly to the GOP. Some scrubbing had to occur—and it did.
This administration gave $150 billion to the Iranians. Enough said.
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