The Trump administration is taking a different approach to North Korea than President Obama, saying the strategy of strategic patience is over. Vice President Mike Pence emphasized that economic and diplomatic pressure is the best way to neutralize North Korea, but says all options are on the table.
"We will protect the peace and security of this part of the world, and achieve our shared goal of a nuclear free Korean peninsula," Pence said.
Ty Cobb was the Director of European and Soviet Affairs during the Reagan administration before becoming a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He says the situation in North Korea is very dangerous.
"One of the most critical issues facing the national security community is the threat represented by an erratic leader of North Korea," Cobb said.
The relationship between the United States and North Korea have been strained for decades. Kim Jong Un has made threats to the U.S. before. While his predecessors, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung also made threats, they did not have the military capability to follow through. That is changing with continued testing of ballistic missiles that could possibly carry a nuclear warhead.
"We don't know if they've been able to miniaturize a warhead, put it on a missile and send it to a defined target as far away as the United States, but we'd be very foolish to think that that day is not coming," Cobb said.
The United States has been in similar situations before, including the Cold War, when nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a threat.
"We both had a vast supply of nuclear weapons and there were incidents where we came dangerously close to launching a nuclear strike against each other, but nonetheless, you basically had fairly rational people in the Kremlin, and certainly, you did in the United States and other nuclear powers like France and Britain and China," Cobb said.
Cobb says Kim Jong Un is much more antagonistic and irrational than the Soviet leaders were, and that creates more problems.
"The danger given that situation is much higher with respect to North Korea, today, than it was in any of the time with the Cold War with the Soviet Union," Cobb said.
With a new era of policy regarding North Korea underway, Cobb says it could be just a matter of time before the U.S. takes action, whether diplomatically or militarily.
"If you're national security planner in Washington, right now, you say four years from now, this is where they're gonna be," Cobb said. "So, this is a problem we might have to take care of sooner rather than later."
