We must be brutally honest about the consequences of "kicking the can down the road", as the Clinton Administration did in 1994 and some in the Bush Administration may be prepared to do today. No one looks forward to war with North Korea. But other prospectively greater evils are at issue here: Al-Qaeda nuclear detonations in New York and other American or Western ports would be intolerable. They would be apocalyptic. They could result in the immediate loss of as many lives, perhaps more, as any war on the Korean peninsula. They would leave an environmental catastrophe in their wake that would turn affected major urban centers into wastelands for decades to come. They would stain the world with their ugliness in an unprecedented way and, in so doing, could spell the end of Western economies and societies as we know them.

Can we allow that to happen?

Essay Types: Essay