The North Korean Threat

     Yesterday, in somewhat surprising announcement, Pentagon officials said that North Korea has developed the capability to launch a nuclear strike against the U.S. interests and the U.S. West Coast!  This means that North Korea not only has the capability to strike our bases in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, as well as Guam), but it can strike Hawaii and the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, and California).  This is truly a disturbing, and frightening, development.   It is all the more surprising because as recently as one month ago, all of U.S. official announcements stated that North Korea lacked the capability to carry out a strike against U.S., they lacked the ability to deliver the nuclear payload, although they had the nuclear weapons!  Our experts predicted that it would be at least 2020 before North Korea would have the capability.  But now it seems, having conducted over 30 missile tests during 2016, they have the capability to reach our West Coast, four years ahead of our timetable!  Oops, our "experts" were wrong again.
     Concurrently with Pentagon's statement about North Korea's capability, Japan's Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba, uncharacteristically, stated that Japan would consider carrying out a pre-emptive strikes should their intelligence indicate that a North Korean attack was eminent.  This was a very uncharacteristic remark in a sense because Japan has never made mention before of taking any sort of aggressive action, an offensive role (for self-defense, of course).  An offensive military strike is absolutely forbidden according to the Japanese constitution.  However, Prime Minister Abe has been working on trying to change some of the language of the Japanese constitution, for which he has been soundly criticized and labeled as a "hawk," even a "fascist" by the liberals not only in Japan, but abroad as well. 
     Abe has been trying to strengthen Japanese military and has increased the military spending considerably.  This was done at our urging, I might add.  Japan, however, does not have the capability to carry out a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.  They do not have the missiles to do the job.  Perhaps there is something in the pipeline coming from the U.S.?  Japan has voiced concern over the "shield" that we are providing.  They are not very confident that the THAAD system that we are putting in place is adequate to do the job.  North Korea has stated that they have the ability to defeat the THAAD system using electronic, i.e., computer technology.  It may be just hot air, but then, we also said that it was hot air when Kim Jong Un announced he could strike our interests and territory!
     It will be very interesting to see how the new administration will handle this situation.  North Korea has to be taken seriously.  They are not "the mouse that roared" anymore.  Actually they never were mice, they were more like vicious rats before. But now they are much larger and more dangerous because despite all of the "pooh-pooh-ing" that was done in the past about their capabilities, it is obvious that they do indeed have nuclear weapons and are capable of reaching our shores! What a scary thought!
     Unfortunately, the past administrations of both parties have done nothing to ease this situation.  It should have been nipped at the bud when the North Koreans first started their nuclear program.  But I guess we were too busy with other things and North Korea was just never high on the priority list.  I hope that this past negligence isn't going to come to roost, so to speak, and become a catastrophe.  The joke or the cartoon of a madman with access to nuclear weapons is no longer a joke.  Kim Jong Un has the weapons of mass destruction and he will use them because, he is crazy!
     Let's see what happens in the Trump administration.  Is it going to be business as usual as it has been for several decades regardless of campaign promises and political party lines.  Is Trump going to mismanage this North Korean situation and cause a disaster?  His predecessors really can't be accused of mismanaging, because they didn't manage the situation, period!  Let's see what he does.  Is he going to just sit back and let North Korea dictate our moves, is he going to blow the whole thing up, or is he by some miracle going to manage to resolve the issue once and for all?  There is no magic bullet, no easy solution.  I guess we will just have to wait.