The US apparently has the technology with which to defend itself against a possible attack from the North Korean territory. But according to Ashton Carter and William Perry, it cannot ensure enough security and so it is "risky". Now a strike is risky too, to say the very least.

The problem with North Korea, as with any full-blown totalitarian state, is that it is built on irrational foundations. Such a regime is not about minimizing human loss or avoiding a suicidal course. When dire circumstances and even famine are daily routines, when the imminent threat of an American attack is used as an instrument of national mobilization and to buttress state ideology, the leadership sends its people to death easily. In a totalitarian, closed state, people are easily indoctrinated to a point of mass hysterics (remember the images of weeping nation in the wake of Kim Il Sung's death!). Besides, in such a regime, to give in to US threats or "swallow" a strike is to show weakness that may cost North Korean leaders their positions and likely their lives. It sounds unrealistic that the US can "make clear" to North Korea that "South Korea will play no role in the attack". Since South Korea is close and vulnerable, North Koreans will likely do as much damage as possible to the pro-American neighbor, even if they die in the process.

But all the above would have also been true before the war in Iraq. Today, however, with the US' moral authority largely squandered and America increasingly seen as an aggressive force which attacks whenever and wherever it sees fit, such a strike is likely to become highly destabilizing. It will deepen the fears of those leaders who believe (or persuade their constituencies) that America may deal a strike on them if they misbehave. (In my country, Russia, this idea is fairly common and is sure to convince many more people, should a strike against North Korea be carried out). It will give additional drive to a broad range of anti-American forces, including the most ugly ones prone to use "dirty bombs" and suchlike. It will work to bring regional organizations built on a vaguely anti-American basis closer together, such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

If, in the meantime, the US stays on alert, drawing on its formidable power of military technology and its intelligence capacity, it is likely to see the North Korean regime fall apart before too long.