Decades of Appeasement Have Brought Us Nuclear North Korea

Right From the Star

The State Department is “white, male and Yale”
Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL)

This past week has seen a rapid escalation in the capabilities of North Korea to deliver nuclear weapons via intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBM) that can penetrate deep into the heartland of America. In response, President Donald Trump has issued a promise that America will devastate North Korea should its dictator Kim Jong Un attack America or its allies.

Not only has North Korea’s missile capability increased dramatically but a recent intelligence report indicates that they have miniaturized its nuclear weapons to the point that they can be delivered by the improved missile capability. All of this rapid improvement in the nuclear capabilities of North Korea has come since Mr. Trump became President.

While that is the clear impression left by the mainstream media, the fact of the matter is such technological improvement simply does not proceed in that short of period. What is more probable is that President Barack Obama suppressed intelligence reports regarding the growing threat of North Korea so that neither he nor unsuccessful Democrat presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) needed to publicly confront the problem or acknowledge the failure of their diplomatic efforts with either North Korea or the pivotal China. An August 9, 2017 article by former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz carried by FOX News stated:

“Tuesday’s bombshell Washington Post story that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has determined North Korea is capable of constructing miniaturized nuclear weapons that could be used as warheads for missiles – possibly ICBMs – left out a crucial fact: DIA actually concluded this in 2013. The Post also failed to mention that the Obama administration tried to downplay and discredit this report at the time.

“During an April 11, 2013, House Armed Services Committee hearing, Congressman Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., inadvertently revealed several unclassified sentences from a DIA report that said DIA had determined with “moderate confidence” that North Korea has the capability to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be launched with a ballistic missile.”

This is not the first time that the Obama administration suppressed information that contradicted or impeded its narrative about the state of terrorism and international hostility. There was Benghazi, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. (Such suppression of information on international affairs joins a consistent stream of similar disinformation on much of Mr. Obama’s domestic agenda.)

The Washington Post reported:

“In their first and only meeting, President Obama explicitly warned Donald Trump days after the election about the urgency of North Korea’s nuclear weapons threat.”

By failing to acknowledge publicly what he knew privately for over three years, Mr. Obama was able to avoid the very difficult decisions that Mr. Trump must now make in his stead. But Mr. Obama is not alone in responsibility for the decades long march to nuclear capability by North Korea. For at least the past twenty-five years, each new administration has succumbed to the “diplomacy of appeasement” that is resident in the State Department and has been fostered and fed by an broken stream of Ivy League graduates who have sniffed and shuttered at the base instincts of mankind assuming a “superior intellect” will drive even miscreants like Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and a list too long to detail, to a “better tomorrow.”

But the fact of the matter is that diplomacy only works between two (or more) parties seeking a peaceful solution to a conflict. It has never worked and never will work with tyrants, despots and lunatics. They will push forward so long as you are willing to back up. The fact of the matter is that resolution of conflicts with the “unwilling” is just as what it was in kindergarten – you can only stop a bully with a bloody nose. It is an axiom that almost everybody, except those in State Department, the Foreign Service and many in Congress, knows to be true. And no where is the policy of appeasement practiced with such earnest failure than among the “intelligencia” of the Ivy League schools – and most particularly Yale, which provides and extraordinarily disproportionate share of graduates to Foggy Bottom including its Foreign Service branch. To say that the State Department is monolithic in its approach to foreign affairs is an understatement. So routine is their urging of appeasement that the department should erect a statue of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in its entryway.

And the policy of appeasement found favor in the Obama administration through both of his heads of the State Department – John Kerry and Hillary Clinton – both Yale graduates. While none of the heads of the State Department under either former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were Yale graduates both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush were themselves Yale graduates and their state departments were riddled with appeasement advocates from Yale. And appeasement is precisely how Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama dealt with North Korea and its barbarous regimes. Yes, there were a series of sanctions adopted by the United Nations that virtually everyone thereafter ignored – the equivalent of passing gas in the elevator and looking the other way. Yes, there were threats of military reprisal but the Kim family of North Korean dictators knew with certainty that it was all talk and no action would be taken.

And while Messrs. Clinton, Bush and Obama dawdled, the Kim family not only developed nuclear weapons and delivery systems, they so overwhelmed the border between North and South Korea with conventional missiles and armor that it threatened the continued existence of Seoul, South Korea’s capitol and population of nearly 10 million people. Just as appeasement has failed elsewhere every time, it has failed in North Korea.

And now we are left with precisely what the predecessors to Mr. Trump vowed they would never let happen – a nuclear armed North Korea with the ballistic missile capability of reaching all of Asia and most of North America. And yet the same voices that urged the appeasement that has brought us to this calamitous result are appalled at Mr. Trump’s resolute promise to turn North Korea into ashes should it use its nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies. It is those same voices that urge further appeasement and will continue to urge appeasement when Seoul or Guam are leveled by North Korea.

And now we are left with two options – economic sanctions that destroy the Pyongyang administration and forces a regime change that is less militant and simultaneous preparation for a nuclear response to active engagement by the North Koreans. What a choice. But that is where appeasement has brought us. The next time the Clintons, Bushes or Obamas host a public forum, thank them for the Hobson’s choice.

Let’s hope that Mr. Trump remembers his lessons on bullies from his days in the schoolyard.