Millions for defense, not one cent for trubute!

I probably wouldn't be classified as a "neocon" in American public consciousness, because A) I don't support unprovoked U.S. wars, and B) I don't support Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank. More generally, I generally think the idea of an American Empire is an abomination, in addition to the fact that it will never ever work.

But I am kind of a hawkish nationalist, especially when it comes to things like North Korea's July 4 cyber-attacks on the U.S. government and the NY Stock Exchange. This is the latest in a string of bellicose North Korean moves - scrapping the armistice that ended the Korean war, exporting nuclear material and technology to rogue states, and firing off missiles in the direction of our allies. But shutting down our government computer networks is a clearly offensive action; North Korea has said they're at war with us, and now they have attacked us.

Let's just paste these bastards.

There are two main obstacles to pasting North Korea. The first is the thousands of artillery pieces they have trained on Seoul; a full-scale bombardment would cause thousands of South Korean civilizan deaths before we could silence the guns. The second obstacle is China, whice is still intent on keeping North Korea as a buffer state against the U.S. (Says a Chinese journalist, "It [China] could cut off the supply, which would lead to a collapse of the regime. That would mean a unified Korea dominated by the United States.").

These are good reasons for caution and restraint. But they may be outweighed by the dangers of not acting. If North Korea manages to proliferate its nuclear technology throughout the globe, we could see nuclear terrorist attacks, small-scale nuclear wars, and/or a collapse of the global political system. And North Korea seems intent on testing out its cyberwarfare capabilities on the U.S. and South Korea - how long before that starts leading to major economic disruption?

Notice that the "neocon" reasons for launching an attack on North Korea - that they're an evil and totalitarian regime, that they brutalize their people, and that they might launch missiles on us in the future - are beside the point here. North Korea has attacked us; they have declared war on us. This is a clear casus belli; a U.S. attack on North Korea would be well in keeping with the Westphalian system of sovereign nation states acting in self-defense against other nation-states. That leaves the question of what kind of attack we should launch.

An all-out strike on North Korea's ground forces might be seen by some third parties as being unprovoked (which it wouldn't be) and disproportional (which it would). It would also increase the likelihood of Chinese involvement on the North Korean side, and make the shelling of Seoul a certainty. A better idea is to start interdicting, boarding, and - if we are fired upon - sinking North Korean ships. This is a proportional response; no one need die in an interdiction. It is also directly relevant to the North Korean threat of nuclear proliferation. It is possible that North Korea really would launch an all-out attack on the South in response to us boarding some of their ships. If so, that's bad, though the end result would be the collapse of North Korea and the unification of the peninsula, which would be very good for everyone.

But it's possible that North Korea might back down, revealing their threats of "total war" to be a bluff. In that case, we'd show the North Koreans that their aggresive cyberwarfare and blatant nuclear proliferation will not go unchecked; a rational North Korean leadership (which may or may not exist) might then get serious about returning to the table about its nuclear program. In addition, we should fight fire with fire - cripple North Korean computer networks with our own cyberattacks. These actions are both provoked and proportional, and could be supported by a good old-fashioned Congressional declaration of war.

U.S. foreign policy, in its best moments, supports the Westphalian ideal; if no one attacks anyone, no one gets attacked, but if countries launch aggression outside their borders, they are subject to U.S. and other retaliation and international sanction. That was the principle behind our entry into the original Korean war - which, looking at South Korea now, we must conclude was a success. It was also the thinking behind Gulf War 1. And it was because the Iraq War so egregiously violated this principle that that war was so damaging to our international standing. It's time to put Westphalia back in place.

Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!