THE very words Donald Trump and North Korea uttered in the same breath is enough to send shivers down the spine of any diplomat. Using his preferred but unedifying foreign policy platform, President Trump tweeted this week that North Korea was “behaving very badly.” China, he added, has “done little to help.”
Cue US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson to announce Washington’s policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea is over. The Trump administration is talking tough.
All options are on the table said Mr Tillerson, suggesting a pre-emptive US military strike against the pariah Pyongyang regime was not out of the question.
READ MORE: North Korea nuclear weapons top of US Secretary of State's Beijing agenda
All this would have a touch of the Dr. Strangelove about it, were it not that Washington right now – unlike the 1964 political satire – appears to be deadly serious.
There is a growing consensus a face-off with North Korea could constitute the first genuine crisis of Donald Trump’s presidency. While it’s one thing for Mr Tillerson to say US policy options remain open, it’s quite another to implement an effective counter to the North Korean threat.
The choices in this regard are quite stark. Washington could simply choose to accept as inevitable continued increases in the quantity and quality of North Korea’s weapons inventories.
This would leave the US, South Korea, and Japan with the option of falling back on a combination of missile defence and deterrence.
The problem with this is that missile defence is imperfect, and deterrence is uncertain. Also, should these fail, the cost would be unimaginable.
The second choice would be some kind of military deployment. The challenge remains over what kind of action could be undertaken that would not rapidly escalate, resulting in an enormous toll in lives and physical damage.
Regime change might also prove the answer but would not be easy in such a closed, isolated, paranoid and belligerent country.
Most kinds of pressure have been tried before with limited impact if any at all, including sanctions and diplomacy. That said, these last two options remain by far the best if all-out conflict is to be avoided.
Mr Trump cannot afford to alienate China in this process, even if his Tweets suggest otherwise. Beijing has no more interest than anyone else in waiting for North Korea to trigger a war in Asia.
China continues to have the capacity to exert pressure on Kim to come to the table to discuss security guarantees in exchange for economic benefits. China and other countries have done this previously, so there is precedent for that kind of approach.
Some might argue that little came from this. This time, though, the stakes are higher as Kim’s weapons programmes have move forward.
As the ridiculous allegations that Britain;s GCHQ wiretapped Mr Trump during his campaign have highlighted, Washington may be too busy fighting real and imagined wars at home to focus on the likes of North Korea.
At some point soon, he will no longer have a choice and serious diplomacy with China’s help has to be the way forward. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
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