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By Margaret Talev, Kambiz Foroohar and Tony Capaccio

The U.S. has gamed out four or five different scenarios for how the crisis with North Korea will be resolved, and “some are uglier than others,” National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said as tensions remain high between the two countries.

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Military analysts say any conflict between the U.S. and North Korea would risk a devastating attack on the South Korean capital Seoul.

“There’s not a ‘precision strike’ that solves the problem,” McMaster, an Army lieutenant general, said at an event in Washington hosted by the Institute for the Study of War.

“There’s not a military blockade that can solve the problem. What we hope to do is avoid war, but we cannot discount that possibility.”

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

McMaster’s remarks suggest he sought to dispel the notion that a single strike could disable Kim Jong Un’s nuclear arsenal or that the regime might easily be toppled, as was Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq or Moammar Kadafi’s in Libya.