Three crazy Kims are three too many

At the end of World War II, Josef Stalin needed to install a puppet leader in North Korea. He turned to Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD (Soviet secret police), for advice.

Beria recommended Kim Il-sung, who became North Korea's head of state from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. Thus began a dynasty of totalitarian tyrants that went on to include his son, Kim Jong-il, and now includes his 28-year-old son, Kim Jong-un.

In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. When hostilities ceased three years later, the Korean Peninsula was cut in half at the 38th parallel. A Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separates the two hostile nations.

Since then, the two nations have gone in opposite directions. South Korea is free and has become a prosperous engine of commerce and enterprise. It is non-nuclear but relies upon the treaty arrangement it has with our nation to defend it, if attacked. The United States has about 30,000 troops in South Korea.

North Korea has been a hermetically sealed police state since its founding. It is impoverished and has endured terrible famines. At least 25 percent of its meager GDP is devoted to its military and nuclear ambitions. Its State Security Department has operated concentration camps since the 1950s that specialize in murder, torture, starvation, forced abortion, rape and medical experimentation. North Koreans are sent to the Gulag without benefit of trial.

The North Korean Army numbers 1.1 million with another 8.2 million in reserve. It is the fourth largest army in the world. North Korea has trained revolutionary and terrorist groups from more than 60 countries, including the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. Its substantial export of armaments and missile technology is carried out by a front organization, the Korea Mining and Development Training Corp., which has sold missile technology to Iran.

North Korea has been actively developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems for years. The United States estimates that it possesses enough nuclear material for two to nine nuclear warheads.

Efforts by the U.S. to use diplomacy, sanctions, appeals to China, and food and energy assistance have all met with failure to convince North Korea to turn away from its military and nuclear ambitions. And now the rise of the untested Kim Jong-un has made a bad situation incomparably worse.

American foreign policy has failed to cope with North Korea's growing nuclear capability because it assumes a modicum of rational self-interest exists in Pyongyang. It doesn't. Kim is crazy. It runs in his family. And Kim doesn't have a Bushmaster with a high-capacity magazine. He's got nukes and an insatiable appetite for more. Think of him as Adam Lanza on radioactive steroids.

Pyongyang expelled the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009. Kim has recently announced he will restart a plutonium/uranium refining reactor at Yongbyon. In February, he authorized the nation's third nuclear test. Now he's barred South Koreans from the only cooperative industrial complex in the North. In addition, he has declared a state of war with South Korea and vowed to launch nuclear missiles at the United States.

Most "experts" in the West discount all of this as bravado. If they are wrong, it's a gigantic and unpardonable miscalculation on our part.

Three-quarters of Kim's 1.1 million army and 10,000 artillery pieces are massed within 60 miles of the DMZ, less than 100 miles from Seoul. A war between these two nations would be savage. Seoul would be pulverized. Civilian casualties would be enormous. South Korea's economy would be plunged into darkness, and that darkness would infect the global marketplace from Asia to America within days.

But even if the experts are right and none of that happens, the continuation of the status quo only results in ever increasing numbers of nuclear weapons for Kim's regime, already the most militarized society on Earth. And the status quo increases the probability that nations like South Korea and Japan will feel compelled to go nuclear, too.

If that happens, expect Vietnam to follow suit. That's an outcome that not only the United States opposes, so would China. That commonality of interest offers the best way out of this growing crisis.

President Barack Obama should send Jon Huntsman, his former U.S. ambassador to Beijing, on a secret mission to China. Huntsman speaks Mandarin, and he and the leaders in Beijing know and respect one another. The message that Huntsman should carry to Beijing is simple. Neither county's interest is served if South Korea, Japan and Vietnam join the nuclear club. Neither country's interest is served if Kim attacks the South. Neither country's interest is served if Kim continues his obsession to acquire nuclear weapons.

Huntsman must press China to force the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear weapons program and remove Kim. There is no doubt that China can do that if it wishes. Finally, Huntsman's message must enable Beijing to read between the lines and understand that if they don't act, America will.

Our action, if necessary, should be pre-emptive and massive. It should destroy the entirety of Kim's nuclear infrastructure and his military machine. The strike should make use of enough tactical nuclear weapons to assure success. Their use would have an additional salutary effect — in Tehran!

The Shadow's brushing up on his Mandarin, but Goldman can be reached at: EmailMe