A Foreseeable Consequence of 23 Years of Bad Foreign Policy

For the past 23 years, the US has:

• Refused to talk directly with the DPRK (North Korea).
• Overthrew a despot who terminated his WMD Program (Gadaffi).
• Not followed the Agreed Framework of 1994 with the DPRK.  (They did for a few years)
• Refused recognition of the government of the DPRK.
• Overthrew another despot on false pretenses (Saddam Hussein).  
• Started a proxy war to overthrow another despot (Assad). 
• Refused to end the Korean war (Really, it's still going on).

Are we surprised then, that they develop nuclear weapons and have now developed an ICBM that can likely strike the west coast of the mainland United States?

They are neither crazy nor stupid, and every move we have made since Bill Clinton lacked the guts to follow his 1992 1994 agreement with the DPRK.

It really is the most logical course of action for them to take, because nuclear weapons work as a deterrent from us:

North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday that, for the first time, appeared capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States, according to experts — a milestone that American presidents have long declared the United States could not tolerate.

The launch, the second of an intercontinental missile in 24 days, did not answer the question of whether the North has mastered all the technologies necessary to deliver a nuclear weapon to targets in the lower 48 states. But just a few days ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned the Trump administration that the North would probably be able to do so within a year, and Friday’s test left little doubt that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, is speeding toward that goal.

The missile launched on Friday remained aloft for roughly 47 minutes, according to American, South Korean and Japanese officials, following a steep trajectory that took it roughly 2,300 miles into space. It then turned and arced sharply down into the sea near the northernmost Japanese island, Hokkaido.

If that trajectory had been flattened out — a step the North may have avoided for fear of provoking an American military response — the missile could have put a number of major American cities at risk, experts say. The Pentagon was quick to declare that the “North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.” That statement, while true, ignored the potential long-term implications of the launch.

“Depending on how heavy a warhead it carries, this latest North Korean missile would easily reach the West Coast of the United States with a range of 9,000 to 10,000 kilometers,” or 5,600 to 6,200 miles, said Kim Dong-yub, a defense analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “With this missile, North Korea leaves no doubt that its missile has a range that covers most of the United States.”

Accept reality and deal directly with Pyongyang before they have a missile that can strike Washington, DC.

We already know that the DPRK is working on a boosted fission warhead, which is an essential part of the warhead miniaturization process, and we know that they will literally starve their people to death to develop this capability, because they believe that they are facing an existential threat from the United States.

Just talk to them, and while you are at it, end the f%$#ing Korean war.  It's absurd that we are still under a temporary truce after 75 years.