At the risk of repeating something everyone already knows: the situation on the Korean Peninsula is a dire one. This, at least, is one point on which pretty much everyone with a brain and a pulse can agree. The real question, however, is this: what is to be done about it? Shall we cower in fear, appeasing the mad Dictator of North Korea until, someday, his demands grow to such an extent that we can finally agree that we will not meet them? Or will we resolve to act with the firmness that the situation demands, determined to defend freedom however high the cost might be? Appeasement or war? Or, far more accurately, shall we have war today or war tomorrow?

There is no avoiding this war but in abject surrender and submission. North Korea is an Orwellian hell-hole, ruled by a lunatic armed with ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. We have no reason to believe that the present commandant of one of the world’s largest prisons will surrender his power willingly, nor do have any reason to believe that his battered, starving, brainwashed, and terribly confused people have either the ability or inclination to overthrow him themselves. To sustain his country Kim Jong Il relies upon the tool of blackmail. He blackmails America, Japan, and South Korea into aiding him by the fear of the bomb, while he blackmails China through the fear of the refugee. In the nine years since Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang to achieve a peace for our time, the demands of North Korea’s dictator have grown progressively bolder, soon his demands will be intolerable altogether. It is not a question of if this will happen, but rather of when.

What do we do on the day when Kim Jong Il picks up the phone, calls the President of the United States, and says, “I have two dozen missiles fueled on their launch-pads and, unless you pay me fifty billion dollars, I shall launch them at Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego�? A foolish and weak man would probably give into such demands, believing in vain that his course of action will save lives, even though it will only invite worse threats in the future. A strong man would have no choice but to hang up the phone and to fill the Korean skies with missiles and bombers, but such a decision would have consequences as well. What if one (or more) of Kim’s missiles gets through and kills half a million Americans? Their blood would cry out for blood. And millions would die. It cannot come to that.

The only option then is to strike now. It would have been better to strike in 1994, when they were weaker. However, given the rate at which the North Koreans are reprocessing plutonium and building bombers, there can be no question that they are growing stronger by the day. At present it is believed that they have two nuclear bombs, maybe more. What will we do in a year, when they have twenty bombs? Or shall we let another decade pass, when they would have five hundred and the missiles to mount them on?

Nor should we delude ourselves into relying upon such spending to cause a total collapse of the North Korean economy or into believing that such a collapse is likely to produce results which would meet with our approval. On launching his quest to build a Muslim bomb, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared that his people would eat rocks and dirt, but that they would have an atomic bomb. He meant that his people would do so out of their own determination to catch up with India. The North Korean people have no such choice: it’s one of the reasons why dictators are so fond of command economies. Moreover, even if a North Korean arms build-up does trigger a general economic collapse, all that will do is increase the likelihood of the issuance of a final ultimatum to the Washington.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “we can not escape history… The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.� However we came to this position, to this moment in time, we are in it now: and we have no choice. We know that one day either the North Koreans will attack us, or leave us with no choice but to attack them, so why not get it over with now while we are strong and they are weak? This is a course of action fraught with danger: but it is better than the alternatives.

Because of the peril inherent in the present situation, the attack would have to be a sneak attack, taken with a minimum of forewarning. Moreover, because the total destruction of North Korea’s weapons would have to be assured, this attack itself would have to utilize nuclear weapons in an offensive role.

The opening salvo would be delivered by stealth aircraft, and it would fall in the middle of the night. Weapons would have to be used to attack not only North Korean nuclear facilities, but their missile and air bases, as well as the great concentrations of artillery that lay along the demilitarized zone. The attack would have to be followed up upon, with a minimum of delay, by the South Korean and American troops stationed along or near the DMZ, with the goal of forcing all surviving DPRK artillery units to retreat into positions from which they would be unable to attack Seoul.

This will be, to say the least, politically difficult but, I believe, manageable. While it is certainly true that the South Koreans will be notably unhappy about the United States throwing about tactical nuclear weapons a few miles from their border, it seems singularly unlikely that they would refuse to participate in follow-up military operations designed to protect Seoul simply out of spite. If, afterwards, they no longer feel a need to have US troops stationed in their country, so much the better.

We must, I believe, disenthrall ourselves of our antiquated notions about nuclear weapons. Modern low-yield tactical nuclear weapons do not generate great amounts of fallout, nor do they do lasting radiation damage. In all reality, they are little different than most other types of weapons except in one important respect: they pack a wallop of a punch. They should not be used every day, but there are times that call for their use: this is one of those times.

A year and half ago we allowed our great anti-nuclear prejudice to get in the way of a magnificent opportunity to deal a crushing blow to al-Qaeda. A few small nuclear weapons could have sealed those caves at Tora Bora for a thousand years- with most of the leadership of al-Qaeda inside.

Nuclear weapons are needed here for several reasons: some of the targets are deeply buried; the absolute destruction of the targets needs to be 100% certain, and the number of units involved in planning and staging this sort of attack will need to be kept to the absolute minimum. An attack without them is doomed to fail, because it will require a gathering of forces on such a scale that it would forewarn the North Koreans.

Why, you might ask, is surprise so critically important? Simple: without it we run the risk of the North Koreans taking pre-emptive action or, at the very least, being prepared to effectively respond in the event of an attack. We cannot allow this because, if the North Koreans have forewarning, any attack will carry with it the risk of a nuclear attack on civilian areas which could cost millions of lives.

This is a fated hour. Either we must strike now: and win, or we must accept a new world, a world run not by advocates of democracy and human liberty, but rather by the powerful dictators of barren and impoverished lands, dictators made powerful by their weapons of mass destruction and the impotence of the West against the threat they pose. The battle to come will be fought in Korea, but it is not just a battle for Korea. For, if we fail to take the challenge, we will soon find ourselves faced not with one nuclear-armed rogue state, but a dozen, and with them the loss of all hope for a better world in our lives. Now is our best chance to act.