Appeasement pays no dividends

This nation's national security experts cannot determine whether North Korea's Kim Jong-un is crazy like a fox or just crazy. That conundrum has paralyzed and rendered ineffective our attempts to deal with the mounting crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

In fact, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that his regime presents a clear and present danger to the vital interests of the United States.

History has taught us that appeasement not only does not work, it serves as an incitement to those who would harm us or our allies. It acts as a deadly accelerant. Thinking otherwise flies in the face of history.

On Sept. 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany, where he had signed the Munich Agreement that permitted Nazi Germany to annex a portion of Czechoslovakia that bordered Germany, known as the Sudetenland. At 10 Downing St. that day, Chamberlain proclaimed, "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time."

When he heard of the Munich Settlement, President Franklin Roosevelt sent a two-word telegram to Chamberlain. It read, "Good man." Good man, indeed! Less than a year later, the Nazis invaded Poland, and World War II had begun. By the summer of 1940, the Wehrmacht had overrun most of Europe. England stood alone.

President Roosevelt, wary of the strong isolationist and anti-interventionist feeling in America, remained timid in the face of aggression. He would not endanger his plan to seek an unprecedented third term in 1940. It would take Pearl Harbor to stiffen America's resolve.

By August 1945, Germany had been defeated, but Japan, having been pushed back to its home islands, showed no signs of surrender.

President Harry Truman faced a terrible decision — use the atomic bomb or risk upward of 1 million casualties in an allied invasion of Japan. President Truman authorized the use of the bomb, and a month thereafter, Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

The lesson is obvious. Appeasement pays no dividends. The use of overwhelming force does. However, with respect to North Korea, this is a lesson the United States has refused to learn.

The American government has known for decades that North Korea is a militaristic, closed society that brutalizes its people and sells armaments, including missiles and missile technology, to the enemies of the United States. It has sold armaments to Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Yemen, to name a few. Armament sales are its principal source of hard currency.

North Korea successfully conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. In 2007, it announced that it had nuclear weapons. In 2009, it expelled inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which had stated that North Korea had become a full-fledged nuclear power. It is not a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. And about 10 days ago, our Defense Intelligence Agency reported that it had concluded with "moderate confidence" that North Korea was capable of launching a missile with a nuclear warhead.

In the face of this growing threat, America has dithered. Its ineffective efforts are tantamount to appeasement. We chase ourselves in a circle, having offered food and energy assistance to a pariah regime that gets those commodities from its principal ally, China. We have failed to convince China that it needs to bell the North Korean cat.

China hasn't been willing to take that action because it prefers a buffer between itself and South Korea, because it doesn't want to have to deal with millions of North Korean refugees streaming into China were it to disrupt the North's dependence on China's supply of oil and food, and because it has learned that America will not take the steps necessary to change the status quo ante. Even a village idiot can figure out that our foreign policy gives carte blanche to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions and recklessness.

One only needs to look at Secretary of State John Kerry's recent talks in Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo to see the barrenness of our approach. In a joint news conference with the South Korean foreign minister, Kerry said, "We are all united in the fact that North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power."

Hello! It already is a nuclear power. This issue has nothing to do with "acceptance." It has to do with eliminating that nuclear power and the existential threat it poses.

In The Washington Post, David Ignatius reported that M.J. Chung, the controlling shareholder of Hyundai, urged the U.S. to redeploy the tactical nuclear weapons it removed from South Korea in 1991, and said the South should begin to develop nuclear weapons.

The way out of this madness is clear. Beijing needs to be told that either it replace Kim Jong-un and insist that the Korean Peninsula be denuclearized, or we will. My guess is that when Beijing hears that message, things will change for the better in Pyongyang, pronto.

If it doesn't, then we can send 500,000 American troops halfway around the world to fight a five-year ground war, incur 100,000 casualties, and spend $3 trillion to $5 trillion, or we can use nuclear weapons to get the job done in a couple of weeks. I wonder which choice President Truman would make?

The Shadow's headed to Beijing, but Goldman can be reached at: EmailMe