Does the United States have anything really to worry about militarily from North Korea?
The thing we would be most worried about is not actually nuclear weapons that North Korea itself would launch. We’re mainly worried about three things: One is if North Korea were to sell fissile material to terrorists groups. Secondly, there’s the issue of the impact that its nuclear weapons program has on other countries around North Korea, particularly Japan, which is non-nuclear, and South Korea, Taiwan and so forth. You don’t want a proliferation dynamic in that region. The third thing is, at some point North Korea is going to disappear. Quite possibly that will be sudden, the way the Romanian former dictator (Nicolae) Ceausescu disappeared. If so, and you have nuclear material there, then you have a potential “loose nukes” problem, which again gets back to the terrorism issue. These are probably more serious medium and longer-range concerns than North Korea’s current military capability. Q: What about China? It’s sort of acting as North Korea’s patron, isn’t it? A: China is keepin
