“All Options” Mean “None”

By Bill Lee

On his recent trip to Asia, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (apparently known in the State Department as the extinct T. Rex for his phantom existence there) indicated that Trump et al. have run out of patience with the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience,” which avoided dialogue with Pyongyang to pressure it to abandon its nuclear arsenal, and that “all options” are now on the table, which presumably includes a preemptive strike against North Korea. The apparent shift in US policy reveals the sheer paucity of the Trump administration’s thinking on North Korea.

It should be noted that the US military formulated a new operations plan, OPLAN 5015, for dealing with North Korea in 2015, during the Obama administration. As far as can be gleaned, the secret plan calls for more aggressive military action against missile and nuclear facilities and the decapitating of the Kim Jong Un regime, including, of course, the Supreme Commander himself. It also plans for a preemptive strike against North Korea. But as has been repeatedly pointed out, North Korea’s missile and nuclear facilities are virtually impossible to locate because they are underground and, in the case of missile launchers, mobile. Even assassinating Kim Jong Un would be very difficult because of his uncertain whereabouts and use of doppelgangers, which had been verifiably used by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in volume. Moreover, a preemptive attack would certainly invite a massive artillery barrage on Seoul in retaliation, resulting in immense loss of life.

The only answer is dialogue with Pyongyang; indeed, Donald Trump himself said he would be willing to sit down for a “hamburger” with KJU. It is often (mistakenly) alleged that dialogue never works with North Korea because the regime always reneges on its promises. But that is not always true. Remember the 1994 Agreed Framework. North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear development in exchange for proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors and 500,000 tons of heavy-fuel oil annually. But it was the US side that almost immediately reneged on the deal — initially the non-supply of the fuel oil — because of the Republican takeover of the US Congress in 1994. Dialogue appears to be the only answer. Who knows? The untethered Trump and the megalomaniacal Kim Jong Un may become soul partners in dialogue.

Photo by Bruce Thomas via Flickr

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