Pressuring North Korea ― Evaluating Options

For 20 years, the United States has responded to every North Korean provocation with either isolation or inducements to negotiate. Our efforts to isolate Pyongyang have either been incomplete or hamstrung by China. Meanwhile, North Korea has used negotiations to extract wealth without ever slowing weapons development. Since 1995, we have provided $1.3 billion in economic and humanitarian assistance to North Korea, and weapons development has only accelerated. This is 20 years of failed approaches. The Obama administration's strategic patience was a low-effort strategy, taking some measures to isolate North Korea, and then simply waiting for the Kim Jong Un regime to wake up and give away his nuclear weapons. There is plenty of blame to go around. George Bush removed North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, and the Clinton administration allowed North Korea to start a nuclear program, although it was deemed for peaceful purposes, which they strayed from. These ineffective approaches have gotten us no closer to a denuclearized peninsula. Pyongyang has dramatically accelerated its belligerent behavior, conducting two nuclear tests and two dozen missile launches in 2016. Kim Jong Un has tested more missiles than Kim Jong Il, his father, and Kim Il Sung, his grandfather, combined, while making continued progress toward an ICBM capable of targeting nearly the entire continental U.S. A more forward leaning North Korea policy will require more effort and resolve, as we have seen passivity fail time and again.