Pat Buchanan has no idea how to deal with N.K.

With North Korea's launch of a ballistic missile on the 4th of July, great ideas are being floated on how to deal with them. The president made the situation sound particularly urgent with his comments that "The North Korean regime is causing tremendous problems and is something that has to be dealt with, and probably dealt with rapidly.”

Conservative Pat Buchanan discussed the repercussions of a few of these options in his column "An America First Korea Policy." [Source]

He rightly identifies that North Korea's pursuit of a nuclear weapon has become more urgent since the end of the Hussein and Qaddafi regimes in Iraq and Libya, respectively. And he understands that there are no "good" options on the matter. Unless we somehow physically stop North Korea, they may soon have a nuclear warhead-tipped ballistic missile that can reach Seattle.

With its new president in place, the South Korean strategy is to engage the North, something Buchanan concedes is its sovereign right, given that they would are the ones who would suffer most from any conflict. (It's up to this point that I completely agree with everything Buchanan is saying.) But given the divergence in approaches between the U.S. and South Korea, Buchanan believes we need to break with South Korean and pursue an "America First" approach.

It's at this point that Buchanan then goes off the deep end with three points:

1. We should dissolve the mutual security treaty with South Korea so that WE get the freedom to decide whether we'll participate in any new Korean war. To him, there's no sense in sticking with an Eisenhower-era agreement. He then uses Lord Salisbury's quote, “The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies,” to justify the shift.
   
   
2. He recommends that the South pursue its own nuclear deterrent, if it wants to prevent an attack by the North. To him, there's no sense in involving us in any North-South nuclear war. As he puts it, "No vital U.S. interest requires us, in perpetuity, to be willing to go to war to defend South Korea, especially if that war entails the risk of a nuclear attack on U.S. troops or the American homeland."
   
   
3. He asks the irrelevant question, "If the United States did not have a mutual security pact that obligates us to defend South Korea against a nuclear-armed North, would President Trump be seeking to negotiate such a treaty?"

This is where I completely lose it, because Buchanan is now talking complete nonsense. Let's go over all the reasons why.

1. As he recognizes in his own article, South Korea is the one pursuing the more dovish policy, not us. The United States is not at risk of getting "dragged into" a nuclear war with North Korea because of the South. I don't know where he gets this idea from.
   
   
2. As he recognizes in his own article, North Korea is pursuing a nuclear deterrent because of the U.S., not the South. For all its rhetoric against the South, the North has no real beef with the South right now. Its first priority is to protect its existence; as far as I can tell, its second is to get U.S. troops off the peninsula.
   
   
3. The Lord Salisbury quote goes both ways. Why are we continuing the same toothless denuclearization policies that have failed in the past? Why do we continue to think China holds the real key to the problem? And why do we continue to think only of military solutions as our only possible solutions? Those are the real policy carcasses right there.
   
   
4. If we're going to play ball with North Korea -- whether to win, lose, or make a deal -- let's first ask ourselves what they want. As Buchanan points out in the first part, our very recent record of invading uncooperative countries means survival is probably number one. And given the whole Korean War legacy thing, reunification of the peninsula would be a long-term, eventual second. But Buchanan's recommendations seem to stem from a belief that North Korea wants Nuclear War For the Hell of It. And that's just plain stupid.
   
   
5. As Buchanan puts it, "No vital U.S. interest requires us, in perpetuity, to be willing to go to war to defend South Korea, especially if that war entails the risk of a nuclear attack on U.S. troops or the American homeland." That may sound like an "America First" policy, but in really it's just a coward's rationale for running from a problem. If Pat Buchanan can't find a vital interest in dealing with North Korea, then I wonder what he considers a vital interest. Isn't "continuance of the international system that we built and benefit from" decent enough? What about "stable international business ties"? No? Then how about "the continued faith of our allies that we stand together against threats to American values such as freedom, democracy, and human dignity"?
   
   
6. Well, if you don't care about those things, then how about this vital interest, Pat? --Our right, as a country, TO HOLD A MAN CARD!?! How is it we stood up to the Soviet Union, in the defense of the free world, and in the shadow of mutual nuclear annihilation, for 45 years, but fold in the face of a ruined, Third World country's dictator because he *might* be nuclear capable soon? The notion itself is embarrassing.
   
   
7. Regardless of the previous point, if Buchanan's solution to the North Korea threat is to abandon South Korea to its fate and pull troops out of the country (there'd be no reason to be there, if not to defend it), then we might as well at least negotiate something for it. After all, we negotiated with North Vietnam to attain a peace before we abandoned South Vietnam, so why not do the same again? If our withdrawal isn't EXACTLY what North Korea wants, we should probably identify that now, because Buchanan seems to want to give them everything they want in exchange for absolutely nothing.
   
   
8. Buchanan's last point, that we shouldn't bother protecting South Korea now because we wouldn't if we weren't already committed is equally ridiculous. Consider this: a Louisiana resident bought his home, and some time afterward a hurricane struck. The man walked away from his property and defaulted on his mortgage, reasoning that if he wasn't already committed to it, he wouldn't be wanting to buy it now anyway.
   
   Does that make any sense?
   
   As Buchanan ended his own column, "The question answers itself."