WHY TAKING OUT KIM JONG UN IS NOT A GOOD OPTION?

 North Korean threat has moved to next level this year, with the regime successfully demonstrating its destructive capabilities in the form of powerfully 100 kilotons nuke as well long range missiles Hwasong 14 & Hwasong 15. Unlike the U.S administration’s deliberations on the many issues like Syrian chemical weapons attack, President Trump has given his national security advisers far more time and a wider degree of flexibility when it comes to North Korea. Before the policy review began, the Wall Street Journal reported in March that Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland directed aides to include “ideas that one official described as well outside the mainstream.” In this video, Defense Updates analysis WHY TAKING OUT KIM JONG UN IS NOT A GOOD OPTION? Lets get started. OPTIONS We now know just how unconventional some of these options are: they apparently include everything from reintroducing nuclear weapons to South Korea as a show of force and deterrence to assassinating Kim Jong-un and his top commanders. “We have 20 years of diplomacy and sanctions under our belt that has failed to stop the North Korean program,” a senior intelligence official involved with the review told NBC News. Reading between the lines and it’s obvious what the overall message from the Trump administration is: North Korea is a problem that has been on Washington’s hot-plate for way too long, so it’s time to shake up the establishment and look for new alternatives. ASSASSINATION There was a time when assassinating a foreign leader was an integral component of America’s national-security toolkit. During the Cold War, leaders who were either insufficiently supportive of U.S. policy goals or in bed with the Soviets were targets for removal. Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo and Guatemala's Jacobo Árbenz were all on the CIA’s hit-list at one point in time, and Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi was a frequent target due to his sponsorship of international terrorism. CHANGE IN STANCE Things changed after the end of Cold War. Killing foreign political officials, an option that was once always on the table, is now generally discouraged and frowned upon. In fact, It’s been U.S. policy since the Gerald Ford presidency to stay far away from anything that would suggest that the United States is a participant, involved in some way or complicit in an assassination attempt. President Ford’s executive order on this is quite clear: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” President Reagan restated—and some would say expanded—that restriction in executive order 12333, which says that, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” CURRENT SITUATION Pursuing a policy that would lead to the assassination of Kim Jong-un and the decapitating of the North Korean leadership would therefore be a big reversal from a U.S. policy that has persisted for forty-one years. ANALYSIS A question that is just as important is whether assassinating Kim or the generals in charge of North Korea’s nuclear program, ballistic missile program, military or intelligence services would be a good idea. North Korea is an entirely different situation than Iraq was in 2003. Kim Jong-un is solidly in power, having killed or marginalized anyone including his uncle and half-brother perceived to be even a minimal threat to his control. Unlike Iraq, whose military was demoralized and degraded by the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and by a sanctions regime over the next decade, North Korea is a nuclear-weapons state with ballistic missiles that have the capability to level Seoul quickly and target U.S. bases in the region. Killing Kim and banking on the idea that the regime would change how it does business after seven decades would be a high price to pay if that untested theory proved to be wrong. Because North Korea is such a black-hole in terms of human intelligence, the U.S. intelligence community wouldn’t be able to confidently assess that the man or woman (Kim’s sister, for instance) who replaces Kim wouldn’t be just as vicious or unpredictable. Assassinating a head-of-state is the definition of an act of war, and nobody can accurately guess whether cooler heads in Pyongyang would prevail over those who would be itching to demonstrate strength through retaliation. Putting Kim 6 feet underground is only one choice in a set of options, that the National Security Council has on table for President Trump’s consideration. It may even be an option that is so far outside the mainstream that Trump’s national-security aides would discourage him of even studying it further. It remains to be seen, how things pan out.








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