These Are President Donald Trump’s Only Options

There’s good reason why U.S. presidents have kicked the can down the road on confronting North Korea. But as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley put it this week, “there is no more road left.” Maybe. What are President Trump’s options, then?
Option 1: Strike a grand bargain.
Begin with the “triumph-of-hope” scenario — a brokered deal between North Korea, the U.S. and other stakeholders (read: South Korea, China, Japan and Russia) that eliminates the nuclear threat from Pyongyang while allowing for continued survival of the Kim regime. Problem is, those two goals appear mutually exclusive. Kim Jong-un is aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons because he believes they offer his only real guarantee against a future U.S.-led regime change. Is he wrong? Ask Saddam Hussein.
But any deal that allows Pyongyang to keep a nuclear weapon that it can attach to a missile capable of hitting the U.S. is a non-starter for Washington; some analysts estimate that threat will become a reality as soon as next year. There’s no middle ground. Even China and Russia’s proposed temporary “freeze” on North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for the U.S. ratcheting down its military exercises is too much for Washington, which bristles at the implied equivalency between legal military exercises with South Korea and the illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

 

Read More: North Korea: These Are President Donald Trump’s Only Options | Time.com

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