In an interview with “The Today Show,” Senator Lindsey Graham advocated for a first strike against North Korea in the absence of Chinese action, saying that the United States is “on a collision course” with North Korea.

“I talked to the president when I had lunch with him about this very topic. I said, ‘Do you want on your resume that, during your presidency, the North Koreans developed a missile that could hit the American homeland with a nuclear weapon on top of it?,’ and he said, ‘Absolutely not,'” says Graham.

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Graham, one of the most hawkish members of the Senate, says it’s time to demand action from China, backing up that demand with a promise that the United States will act in their absence. China is North Korea’s single largest trading partner, comprising 90 percent of the nation’s trade. China recently announced that trade between the nations had increased by almost 40 percent in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 2016.

“If China can’t stop the regime from building a missile that could one day hit the American homeland,” Graham threatened, “We would do everything including diplomatic sanctions and military strikes to stop their missile program.” He told “Today” hosts that “every Republican and every Democrat has screwed up North Korea […] Now is the time to stop.”

A first strike against North Korea, he says, is the only option even if it almost inevitably provokes war across Asia. Graham acknowledges that “It’d be terrible” to drag most of a continent into war, but “the war would be over there,” and such a war “wouldn’t be here [America].”

“It’d be bad for the Korean Peninsula, it’d be bad for China, it’d be bad for Japan, it’d be bad for South Korea […] It’d be the end of North Korea […] What it would not do is hit America.”