Jawboning

Cooler heads are speaking out over the standoff with North Korea. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said military options are ready but the preferential course is diplomacy. Strong words are useful only to get the other party to the table. The ball is now in North Korea’s court. Will it conduct another ICBM test and will it aim at the vicinity of Guam? That was the threat last week. Words wound but they also can heal. The tragedy would be a total loss of communications between the rest of the world and North Korea. Then any chance of diplomacy would go off the rails and war would be inevitable. As long as each side is threatening, there is still an open line and a chance one or both will back off.  North Korea isn’t going to stop developing its nuclear capability and long range missiles, but there is a chance of making them a potential rather than real threat to the world. There is a rationale behind mutually assured destruction. The North has to understand, however, that it might never reach the number of missiles and bombs that the US possesses, and it is a much smaller country where a nuclear conflagration would have more serious consequences. Continuous communications are a key to peace.