Hawks Dive at North Korea

With a new doctrine and sweeping radical new foreign relations philosophy, as the war with Iraq contines, some within the Bush administration and Congress seek to continue this policy of regime change to other non-democratic nations which are at odds with White House policy. Not all of those regimes are Islamic.

After North Korea violated an agreement with the Clinton Administration to cease its nuclear programs, it has been going head to head with hawks within the Bush administration and the Republican Party. The White House believe that North Korea have at least one or two nuclear warheads and have the capability to produce several more through reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods from nuclear power plants. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has already demonstrated that his state has missile technology which is capable of delivering a warhead to any US interests in the South Pacific or as far west as the California coast.

This revelation both angers and frightens some US officials. As the US continues talks with North Korea with Japan and China some US officials are becoming more and more hawkish. Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say the threat of military action, no matter how risky, must underpin any talks. "I think that that always has to be there as a very strong possibility," Sen. Lugar said on NBC's Meet the Press.

There is an underlying fear among US officials that North Korean nukes could find their way into the hands of terrorists who would use them against America, American interests, or her allies. However, there is just as great a chance that Pakistani or Indian nuclear warheads could fall into the wrong hands. Some officials even fear war from the state of North Korea its self, which is perhaps the reason why Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld circulated a memo in the Pentagon which outlined the popular phrase "regime change" as an ultimate goal in North Korea.

North Korea is an independent state, it is also realist. As such it is rational and its primary interest is self preservation. North Korea and its leaders are well aware that if any of its weapons fall into the wrong hands and are used against the United States in any way that a war will start which it cannot win. North Korea also are aware that if they lunch a missile themselves against the United States, its interests, or allies, that US missiles will fall on Pyongyang before Korean missiles reach their intended targets.

The nature of the international system is to keep a balance of power and to keep individual states in check. If North Korea, a nation without even second strike capability, uses its arsenal for any means other than self defense then the united states of the world would take appropriate action by eliminating the threat.

It is not in the best interests of the United States to preemptively strike any nation that it considers as a possible danger in the future. I can only imagine the armageddon which would have ensued if America had chosen to invade Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis as opposed to implementing the quarantine which decisively adverted a war between the two world superpowers. In that case cooler heads prevailed, if anyone other than Kennedy had been commander in chief, if George W. Bush had been in his place, I would probably not be here to write this nor you to read it.

In a world in which the goal of the United States and its allies is peace, war cannot be the solution to nations which acquire weapons of mass destruction, or which refuse to disarm themselves. Alone, the United States cannot conquer the world, and alone it cannot prosper, and alone is what it will be in a world where war becomes America's universal solution to all international crisis and dilemmas.