You don’t have to legally recognize it,” Lewis said.īoth Israel and India provide examples of how the US can deal with North Korea, he added. “I think the most important step that (US President Joe) Biden needs to take is to make it clear to both himself and the US government that we will not allow North Korea to disarm and that it basically accepts North Korea as a nuclear does. That’s the solution Jeffrey Lewis, an assistant professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, advocates. on North Korea.Ī better approach, some suggest, might be to treat North Korea’s nuclear program in a similar way to Israel’s - with tacit approval. “Let’s face it, North Korea is a nuclear weapons state, and North Korea has all the necessary delivery systems, including highly capable ballistic ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles),” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at the University Kookmin in Seoul and an academic authority. Conversely, the perception that partners have their heads in the sand may make them more anxious. Moreover, recent missile tests show that there are several ways to deliver those weapons.Īlso Read : Suspect intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi and 'break her kneecaps,' San Francisco DA saysīut some experts say that denying North Korea’s nuclear capability - in the face of increasingly clear evidence to the contrary - does little to reassure these countries.

Doing so would immediately give up optimistic - some might say delusional - hopes that Pyongyang’s program is somehow incomplete or that it might still be persuaded to give it up voluntarily.Īs Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it: “We simply need North Korea to be what it is, instead of what we want it to be.”įrom a realistic point of view, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and few who follow events there closely dispute this.Ī recent Nuclear Journal column from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to make between 45 and 55 nuclear weapons. Remember that North Korea launched a record number of missiles this year – more than 20 claims it is deploying tactical nuclear weapons in field units, something CNN cannot independently confirm and is also believed to be ready for its seventh underground nuclear test.Īll of this has led a growing number of experts to question whether now is the time to call it quits and accept that North Korea is indeed a nuclear state. Remember that this is a dictator who cannot be voted out of power and usually does what he says he will do.

Kim may be no stranger to colorful language, but it’s worth taking his oath - which he signed into law - seriously. The move was “irreversible,” he said the weapons represent the “dignity, body and absolute power of the state” and Pyongyang will continue to develop them “as long as there are nuclear weapons on Earth”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told the world last month that North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and will never give them up. As a statement of intent, they’re as sarcastic as they get.

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