Editor's Note: In our latest Facebook Live interview (please like our Facebook page to see more of these events) Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, and Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, discuss updates on the Korean Peninsula.

Harry Kazianis recently wrote an article arguing that the United States should contain North Korea. An excerpt of the article can be found below:

A SPECTER is haunting Washington—the specter of nuclear war with North Korea. The idea that the Trump administration should endorse a military solution—and a full-blown war if necessary—to degrade or destroy North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program is acquiring a new prominence. Advocates of war argue that the time to hit North Korea is now. They say that time is running out, and that Pyongyang will soon perfect its ability to attack America. Their contention is that America can knock out North Korea’s nuclear program with some “shock and awe”–style bolt from the blue. Finally, they say that a war “over there” would be better than the death of innocent Americans “over here.”

Such thinking is redolent of the Iraq War. Just as the war in Iraq evaded the prediction that it would be a “cakewalk,” so a conflict over North Korea would likely issue in a calamity. There is no widespread public support, as a recent Washington Post–ABC News poll indicates, for a preemptive American strike on North Korea: 67 percent of Americans say Washington should act only if North Korea attacks it or our allies first. Before Washington experiences a fresh spasm of war fever on the Potomac, it’s imperative to examine just why a conflict with North Korea is inimical to America’s national interest. For the notion that America can “totally destroy” North Korea, as President Trump put it, with impunity is not quite persuasive. The result could even be a wider conflict, one that draws in great powers such as Russia and China that would seek to defend what they perceive as their own national interests.

Today, we live an age where America’s greatest strategic advantage—two big oceans that protect us from the great geopolitical struggles in Europe and Asia, both past and present—is no longer the strategic safety blanket it once was, thanks to modern missile technology. Put simply, while the American military is the most destructive force ever devised in human history, such a force cannot guarantee that Washington will eliminate every single North Korean nuclear weapon. Nor can we ensure that if Pyongyang retaliates, potentially with whatever nuclear weapons we miss, that our missile defenses can keep us safe. Quite the contrary.

The truth is that a war with North Korea could be nothing like the First Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Second Gulf War or Libya. Such a conflict could be an epic struggle in which millions of people, on the Korean Peninsula, in Japan and even in the continental United States, could perish. The best path forward is to practice the foreign-policy doctrine that ended the Cold War peacefully: containment. Containment, rather than open conflict or outright appeasement, is not a panacea, but under the circumstances it is the best of the options that Washington can pursue. As during the Cold War, a patient and vigilant strategy can wait out a hostile regime in the expectation that it will eventually crumble. A look at the possible outcomes of a nuclear conflict shows why it is more prudent to adopt this approach than to strike first.

WHEN WE consider the possibility of a military operation against North Korea, it is helpful to take a step back and consider from Pyongyang’s perspective how it might respond. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may not wish to counter such a strike by using the full range of his military options, fearing such an attack could unleash his worst fear: regime change.

This is where U.S. military planners begin to get nervous, as North Korea—even despite having an army that looks more like it was outfitted in the 1950s—has many ways to keep us guessing militarily. Kim could opt for less conventional means to instill fear and panic, attacking in an asymmetric manner that would be hard to counter.

For example, Kim could order an attack on South Korea’s vast civilian nuclear infrastructure, unleashing deadly plumes of radioactive fallout. Seoul operates twenty-four nuclear power plants that could all come under various forms of North Korean attack, though they are relatively far from the North. With many of these facilities lumped together, Pyongyang could fire a salvo of missiles at these plants, creating an immediate humanitarian crisis.

The North Koreans could also use their special forces. They could infiltrate the South from existing tunnels to launch terror attacks against such facilities. If North Korea were to destroy just a few reactors, a disaster eclipsing Chernobyl could occur, killing tens of thousands and leaving millions of acres of South Korea an uninhabitable wasteland for generations.

Image: Reuters