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It was all quite clear: if North Korea attacked Guam, the response would be conventional but overwhelming

Furthermore, it was successful, as Kim announced mid-week that he would not be firing missiles near Guam after all. Park’s portrayal of North Korea as some sort of worthy protagonist of the United States was bunk; it either does not have, or would not retain after one hour of hostilities with the United States, “one of the largest standing armies in the world, advanced nuclear and missile capabilities … and the latest submarine, cyber, and aircraft capabilities.” It has 20 small diesel submarines, a minuscule air force and a grossly under-equipped army. The only military issue is whether the U.S. in a preemptive strike could destroy enough of the artillery massed to bombard Seoul (the booming and immense capital of South Korea), before it could be fired. North Korea is not a formidable adversary, and has a GDP smaller than that of Nova Scotia, and a per capita income of five per cent of that of South Korea. It is a starving, tyrannized basket case that could not withstand or answer an American conventional first strike for 10 minutes.

This does not mean that war should be entertained frivolously as a policy, as it habitually is in Kim Jong-un’s polemics, and Park rightly points out that Trump has inherited a mess created by the utter lassitude on this subject of his three predecessors (Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama). But her proposal that “Canada could inspire a much-needed fresh approach in tackling the root causes of North Korea’s military program” is a mad conjuration. She advises that the “liberal-democratic world can only exist if those who threaten it with violence are constrained by diplomatic measures which encompass respect, political engagement, humanitarian values and strategic capability, and … Canada has a lot to offer in this regard.”