I guess this makes me sounds pretty hawkish, but sometimes the best long-term solution requires short-term sacrifice. Best case scenario it would be Gulf War 1 Round 2, worst case scenario a major city in Korea gets nuked. I just don't see any scenario short of a regime change where North Korea plays ball.
Something tells me you won't be doing much of the sacrificing, Jroc. Or will you?
Worst case scenario is that SK and Japan are nuked and hit by chemical and biological weapons. The United States could quite possibly get hit with multiple ICBMs. Most Americans and the President are bipartisan on their ignorance of that, believing even if they launched them at us we would shoot them all down. The President was even quoted saying that our missile defense system has a 97% success rate, which is factually incorrect. It's MUCH less reliable.
NK will get steamrolled, but then there's the economic impact, environmental impact, large number of refugees, severe damage to the reputation of the US and ties to its allies (especially SK), etc, etc.
The North doesn't have to "play ball." They can be contained and deterred while reassuring our allies. We need to stop ignoring NK and take the threat seriously. But when I say seriously, I don't mean in a psychopathic "let's sacrifice (murder) the Asians on that other continent to get rid of the nukes" sort of way.
