National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Saturday the risk of war between the United States and North Korea is "increasing every day," arguing Pyongyang is "the greatest immediate threat to the United States" and "we are in a race to be able to solve this problem." He did concede there are "ways to address this problem short of armed conflict," but said there is "not much time left" for those options because of North Korea's technological progress.
In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, McMaster similarly argued preventive war — for the U.S. to attack North Korea to prevent the materialization of a possible future threat — may be the only option to stop "this murderous, rogue regime" from conquering South Korea and starting an Asian nuclear arms race. He brushed aside Wallace's point that the U.S. learned to coexist with a nuclear Soviet Union for decades during the Cold War, suggesting that to repeat that strategy would be too risky for U.S. security.
Watch McMaster's full Fox interview below, and read The Week's Harry J. Kazianis on the deadly consequences of McMaster's proposal. Bonnie Kristian