In a Wall Street Journal op-ed penned Wednesday, John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, explained why he believes the U.S. must "act" on North Korea, and how military action could be justified legally.

For decades, neoconservative militarism has coursed through Washington's veins; the idea that the United States must make aggressive military decisions, often unilaterally, in the international arena in order to preemptively thwart a perceived immediate threat, has become a norm.

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That ideology is still prevalent today, as it is echoed throughout various mainstream media circles and often used as the driver of conversations on how the U.S. should deal with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

"The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times," Bolton wrote. "Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation."

Bolton added, "How long must America wait before it acts to eliminate that threat?" To which one might counter: How many times in the past has this logic been an accepted, bipartisan line of questioning? It is American exceptionalism at its worst: the historically problematic notion that America is an exceptional nation, and that it and only it, holds altruistic intentions that justify preemptive violence and widespread war casualties, e.g. the half a million dead in Iraq as a result of America's attempt to bring "freedom" there.

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Essentially, Bolton wants to launch an attack to take out the regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un; yet like many hawkish intervention plans of the past, Bolton fails to establish what that attack should be, and what it would actually accomplish in the long term besides killing thousands or millions of Koreans. Among the pertinent questions Bolton hasn't considered: what happens after the U.S. decimates a regime managing a country with 25 million people? A country that also borders the powerful U.S. foreign adversary, China?

These might be important considerations given that only in the past two decades, the U.S. has had similarly mixed results in its imperial ambitions. See also: the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the ousting of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, etc.

The idea of Trump launching a preemptive strike has been derided by experts as a likely awful decision that has loads of unforeseen ramifications.

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Bolton, who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and also a commentator for Fox News, went on to argue that a strike on North Korea would pass the "necessity" test as described by 19th century American politician Daniel Webster.

Bolton elaborated:

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British forces in 1837 invaded U.S. territory to destroy the steamboat Caroline, which Canadian rebels had used to transport weapons into Ontario. Webster asserted that Britain failed to show that “the necessity of self-defense was instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.” Pre-emption opponents would argue that Britain should have waited until the Caroline reached Canada before attacking. Would an American strike today against North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program violate Webster’s necessity test? Clearly not. Necessity in the nuclear and ballistic-missile age is simply different than in the age of steam. [...] This is how we should think today about the threat of nuclear warheads delivered by ballistic missiles. In 1837 Britain unleashed pre-emptive “fire and fury” against a wooden steamboat. It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current “necessity” posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first

The argument comes after President Donald Trump's administration surprisingly announced that, after a year of escalated tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, diplomacy may be a smart decision. Evidently, Bolton is pushing back against the administration.

Yet this point of view is dangerous and short-sighted, and while intervention may not exactly be a new trick in American foreign policy, this form of aggression towards a nuclear-armed nation certainly makes things more unique. Consider that we have Trump at the helm of the military — a man who has promised to rain down "fire and fury" on the country of North Korea — and the U.S. could easily find itself in yet another perpetual war, or worse, a nuclear war that threatens all life on the planet.