Better a million dead North Koreans than a thousand dead Americans. The fundamental reason our government exists is to protect our people and our territory. Everything else is a grace note. And the words we never should hear in regard to North Korea’s nuclear threats are “We should’ve done something.”

Instead, we should do something. Pyongyang’s Sunday test of a hydrogen bomb of devastating power begs for decisive action. Must we wait until Americans die?

A pre-emptive strike against Kim Jong Un’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs would be a terrible thing, demanding a vast military effort (if done properly) and leaving broad destruction in its wake. But that terrible option increasingly appears to be the least bad option. The question is whether we’ll delay action until it’s too late to save American lives.

When we’re threatened with nuclear destruction by North Korea, a military response is not unethical. Rather, inviting a North Korean attack by hesitating endlessly — then witnessing the slaughter of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of our citizens — would be unethical and immoral.

We do not want war. That much could not be more obvious. But we cannot sacrifice American lives to shield the consciences of intellectual elites who, from protected positions of immense privilege, insist that all human life is precious, not just our “deplorable” American lives.

If there is any real hope of a peaceful solution, of course that would be preferable. But we cannot rely on miracles or mirages. A generation of talks has done nothing but protect North Korea’s weapons programs. Sanctions haven’t restrained North Korea either, since China, Russia, India and other states undercut them.

Nor have our displays of force in the region done anything to deter a regime conditioned to our empty pageantry.

North Korea doesn’t believe we will act. Because we never have acted.

Those wildly misnamed Washington institutions labeled “think tanks” find themselves stumped: Conditioned to group-think and addicted to that supreme intellectual opiate, negotiations, we hear — even from conservative voices — that there’s no military solution, while the left repeats that “War never changes anything.”

As to the latter claim, warfare has been humanity’s ultimate means of resolving intractable issues since the first cave-dwellers went at the gang from the cave down yonder with rocks. We may not like it — I don’t — but to insist that war isn’t humanity’s sometimes-necessary default means of survival is to ignore all of human history.

As for the irresponsible claim that there’s no military solution, it’s transparently false. Of course there’s a military solution. It’s horrible, but pulling triggers may be the only option feckless diplomats and prevaricating administrations have left us to protect our people and territory.

Again, the primary rationale for our government’s existence is to protect us from physical harm at the hands of foreign powers. That’s why we have a military. We are promised “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” not a spineless calculus that protects our enemies rather than ourselves.

If someone screams that they’re going to kill us and points a gun toward us, we have the legal and ethical right to draw and fire first. And if the attacker also threatens to kill our wives and children, it would be immoral not to shoot first.

Our North Korea problem comes down to just that.

I realize this column will leave liberals aghast, while even conservatives cling to lullaby chatter. I do not relish death or human suffering. But it would be immoral to allow North Korea to develop an arsenal capable of attacking our military, our cities and our allies.

How could it be ethically superior and morally correct to permit a self-declared and virulent enemy to destroy Honolulu, San Diego and Seattle?

We cannot allow moral relativism to butcher Americans. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. And in the real world, the greatest immorality in war is not killing the enemy. The greatest immorality would be for our country to lose.

Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst.