Should the U.S. bomb North Korea?

In yesterday's WaPo, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, both under Clinton, argue that "if North Korea persists in its launch preparations" — which I recently discussed here — "the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched".

Here's the core of their argument:

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy…

This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive — the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.

It's a compelling case, and I recommend that you read it in full. And, upon reflection, I must say that I'm not necessarily against it. Which is to say, I'm not against taking the North Korean threat seriously. It is, after all, much more serious than any threat Saddam ever posed to U.S. interests leading up to the Iraq War (although he of course posed a serious threat before the Gulf War and the containment that followed). Indeed, my problem here isn't so much the use of force as it is the failure of the Bush Administration to engage North Korea in direct, one-on-one talks with respect to its nuclear program and possible efforts to find a suitable, mutually beneficial solution — conditional aid and trade, for example — to what has long been a crisis in the Far East.

But let's not rush into this. As Noah Shachtman of Defense Tech notes, there may not be a missile, let alone a test of any missile. And there certainly isn't much sense of what such a missile would be "capable of doing". Kevin Drum is similarly skeptical, as is Laura Rozen. See also Peter Howard at The Duck of Minerva, who wonders if North Korea isn't playing a game of "tit-for-tat" with the U.S., and The Heretik, who takes the policy of preemption to its logical conclusion and wonders if we haven't "finally lost it".

If nothing else, just consider the risks associated with such a preemptive strike. How would North Korea respond? Would it attack the South? Would it lob missiles at Japan? Would it now, or eventually, use its nuclear technology in some way against American interests? Is Kim's regime irrational? Or is it playing an escalating game of chicken? Is this a prelude to war or to diplomacy, negotiation, and some sort of "cold" peace?

What should the U.S. do about North Korea? There are no easy answers.