Is North Korea Good-to-Go, and America’s Options
The election in Taiwan on January 13th is putting into sharp relief the increasing insistence by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping that the island’s democratic form of government is an endangered species. He has mobilized his military and society for war in support of Taiwan’s forceful conquest. Xi has also precipitated through various proxies conflagrations around the world from Ukraine to Gaza to the Red Sea for a similar purpose.
Unfortunately, still more acts of such Xi-engineered “strategic arson” seem in prospect, as does their intended effect: distracting the United States, depleting its financial and military resources and otherwise diminishing its ability to deal with the Chinese Communist Party’s own impending acts of aggression towards Taiwan and probably other targets in the Western Pacific.
This CPDC webinar considers the possibility that the next such conflagration might be renewed conflict on the Korean Peninsula. After all, in recent months, North Korea’s totalitarian regime under Kim Jong Un has engaged in myriad tests of increasingly capable missiles, provocative military exercises and bellicose threats towards both neighboring South Korea and the United States.
We explore, among other topics: The Chinese Communist Party’s influence over Kim; his abiding commitment to the forcible reunification of the Koreas under communist misrule; the implications of extensive CCP influence operations and potential Fifth Column subversion in both South Korea and the United States; the implications for human rights and America’s strategic interests if Kim were successful in his aspirations; and what the United States and its South Korean allies must do to deter Korea War 2.0 and help free the people of North Korea from the tyranny that has long and brutally oppressed them – and now poses an ever-greater threat to us.