Was Preemptive Attack Necessary against North Korea?: A Review of Robert Kagan Comments in 2003

Shortly after the Iraq War, a Japanese freelance journalist Kazuki Ohno interviewed Robert Kagan, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This interview was on neoconservatism and American foreign policy, and it was published in a Japanese political journal, entitled SAPIO on June 25, 2003.

In this interview, Kagan talked about North Korea, the most critical threat to the security of North East Asia. He stressed that no diplomatic negotiations and economic incentives have made any progress in nuclear non-proliferation, because North Korea was a totalitarian regime. Kagan also said it was quite unlikely that Japan could normalize the relationship with North Korea.

Since then, it has turned out that what Robert Kagan said in the interviews is right. North Korea simply got rewards without abiding by international obligations. Regrettably, North Korea has acquired the bomb. As Kagan said in this interview, military attack was the last resort to stop nuclear proliferation into a rouge state.

In those days, criticism to the US-led Iraq War was rampant, which led to substantial inflow of Al Qaeda terrorists to Iraq. The media reported anything inconvenient on Iraq so happily, and global leftists were emboldened to hear those news. Terrorists were overjoyed with such trends, until they were defeated in the big surge.

Such globally agitated pacifism is one of the reasons why the Bush administration hesitated to conduct a necessary attack against North Korea. We all know the result of it. The uproar of global leftists was so immense that the United States missed the vital opportunity to destroy one of the worst regimes in the world. Never forget this, those who argue against Pax Americana!