Fifteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, hardliners are applying one of the arguments for attacking Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong Un: that war now, when a rogue leader is on the verge of possessing weapons of mass destruction, is preferable to a much worse war later, when that leader or his vicious allies would be in a position to use those weapons. Conflict is characterized as a calling on behalf of future generations, rather than a choice by the present ones. “As we learned the hard way with Iraq, if a rogue regime is deemed undeterrable, and diplomatic compromise is seen as untenable, the allure of preventive war can quickly become irresistible,” the former Obama administration official Colin Kahl, who opposes military strikes against North Korea, has written. [...]
Prominent Trump administration allies in Congress have sounded similar notes. Given their “recklessness” and “maliciousness,” North Korean leaders are “entirely different than the civilized people we’re dealing with who are nuclear powers,” such as Russia and China, the Republican Senator James Risch told me earlier this month. His colleague Lindsey Graham is more concerned about North Korea, an “unstable regime, cash-starved, controlled by a crazy man,” shopping weapons of mass destruction on the black market, where they could be snatched up by U.S. adversaries like Iran or terrorist groups that wouldn’t hesitate to use such weapons. [...]
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has since grown far more sophisticated, to the point where the United States is now in its crosshairs, and it now has a brash new leader. But it’s still worth keeping in mind that if the Trump administration were to launch a preventive war against the Kim regime, it would be based on an assessment of its adversary that is fundamentally at odds with the conclusion the Bush administration reached 15 years ago. Bush, too, confronted the specter of a North Korea armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. And in that case, he did not choose war.
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