“。。。I think North Korea and Iran are the two biggest threats to the United States at the moment because of their nuclear weapons programs and tyrannical governments. Our policy in both cases should be preemption –: not necessarily military preemption, which is a last resort, but rather seeking to democratize those countries so that they no longer seek to threaten their neighbors or the US.
In the case of Iran, we need to do more to back the democracy demonstrators who want to overthrow the mullahs. In the case of North Korea we need to more to bring pressure on the government to cause its collapse. Among the steps we should take: apply more pressure to South Korea and China to cut off all subsidies and fuel shipments to the North and also undertake selective intercepts of North Korean ships carrying illicit weapons and drugs, a main revenue source for the regime. Only if democracy eventually prevails in Pyongyang and Tehran can the West breathe easy.
China is a much more cautious state and not an immediate threat. Here, too, we should encourage the forces of democracy. Recent developments in Hong Kong are very positive. Eventually China may become a serious competitor to the US militarily but this won't happen for decades. We don't need to worry about China nearly as much as we worry about N. Korea or Iran. “
