With North Korea dropping out of talks and saying that it has nuclear weapons and will continue to produce them how does the world and the U.S. proceed?
From a logistical point of view we can conclude that North Korea has the ability to launch nuclear weapons at the United States from the mere fact that they have launched things into space. Would they attack the United States? More than likely not. There are still skirmishes along the 38th Parallel and because of this I think that North Korea would first go after South Korea for the simple fact that it wants the land. The populations of both countries are growing extremely fast and the territory that is covered is only the size of Pennsylvania and New York.
Should we take an aggressive stand against North Korea or do we sit back and let another Cold War unfold or even worse do we let North Korea use its weight to take over South Korea? Are we still preserving democracy over communism there or has it simply become a symbol of peace? Technically the United States is still at war with North Korea and the scary thought is that they could use that as an excuse to attack the U.S. or the troops stationed in South Korea.
I think the best plan for President Bush is to stand back and look at the situation for a while and let things unfold a little more over there. See if the Japanese or the Russians can get the North Koreans back to the discussion table and talk some sense into them. If we jump into this too quickly we may run into more problems than we expected.
I am not saying go to war with North Korea, by no means. We are right now overdrawn on troops in Iraq and we cannot afford to pull troops from Iraq and put them in South Korea, nor does this country need a draft. I think we just need to take it slow and explore our options.