However, more sophisticated dynamic threat analysis, accounting for possible interactions and cascading miscalculations between actors (such as those that resulted in World War I) suggests pathways to nuclear war are not additive ? but exponential. Thus, addition of North Korea to Russia and China as nuclear threats would, compared to the bipolar Cold War, increase pathways to Armageddon by nine-fold. But even these cold calculations understate the danger, because the actors themselves are more dangerous, especially so in combination: Russia is a failing military dictatorship seeking confrontation to control its population whose greatest asset is nuclear weapons. China is a rising totalitarian hegemon challenging America for world leadership through conventional and nuclear forces. North Korea, perhaps most dangerous, a failed theocracy dedicated to the worship of Kim Jong-un, impoverished and weak, what political scientist Yehezkel Dror would call a “crazy state”? yet a military super-power because of nuclear missiles. North Korea is a threat unprecedented in history. Never before has a state such an utter failure and so dysfunctional been able to threaten great powers ? until today with the advent of nuclear-armed North Korea. North Korean elites are less predictable and more aggressive than Russia and China. Pyongyang launched the Korean War when it had no nuclear weapons, when the United States had an overwhelming preponderance in military power. Kim Jong-un started threatening nuclear strikes against the United States in 2013, shortly after orbiting North Korea’s first satellite. He eagerly sought nuclear confrontation with President Obama and President Trump. North Korea will not be disarmed peacefully. Forcibly denuclearizing North Korea is risky, but the alternative will be fatal.

Mr. Mathis: “Kim is unequivocally a bad guy. But the United States has done business with villainous nuclear states before ― we practiced detente with the Soviet Union. The Cold War stayed cold, by and large.” Why should North Korea agree to peaceful denuclearization when the Democratic Party, representing half the U.S. electorate, and their “mainstream” media allies, have already surrendered so vociferously to living with a nuclear-armed North Korea? Why should North Korea agree to peaceful denuclearization with President Trump, when Democrats may in 19 months capture control of the White House and Senate? Surrendering to a Mutual Assured Destruction relationship with Kim Jong-un ? because of North Korean aggression or miscalculation ? sooner or later will kill millions of Americans. Those who think MAD made for a relatively stable and safe relationship between the United States and USSR don’t know the history of the Cold War. MAD nearly failed over a dozen times. A few of these brushes with nuclear Armageddon during and after the Cold War, are recounted in my book “War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink.” Yet the U.S.-USSR bipolar Cold War was relatively more stable and safer than the emerging multi-polar nuclear threat environment today, where Russia, China and North Korea can all deliver doomsday against the United States. If we are lucky, increased likelihood of nuclear war with more nuclear-armed actors is merely additive. So compared to the Cold War, the triple threat from Russia, China and North Korea increases likelihood of nuclear war “merely” threefold.

There’s no living with a nuclear-armed North Korea. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s paranoid megalomania drove him to develop nuclear missiles while his nation ate grass. Almost certainly, he will not denuclearize peacefully. But what little hope there might have been for peaceful denuclearization has been betrayed by a Democratic Party already surrendering to Kim Jong-un. Democratic national security experts, including Susan Rice, President Obama’s National Security Advisor, former Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, and many others declare we must learn to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea, and accept a Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) relationship with Kim Jong-un. MAD kept the peace during the Cold War with the USSR, and will work with North Korea too, or so they reason. Joel Mathis in The Week recently re-articulated the view of liberal journalists and the Democratic Party: “For more than a generation, American policy toward North Korea has been aimed mostly at keeping that country from obtaining or keeping a nuclear arsenal. That mission failed in 2006, and American presidents have been scrambling ever since to obtain denuclearization. That goal has never been achieved, and there is no reason to believe it ever will be.” Mr. Mathis, who describes himself as no fan of President Trump, praises the president’s performance at the Hanoi nuclear summit, which he interprets as manifesting a decision “to live with the weapons, pursue peace, and find a way to declare victory anyway even if he still talks about denuclearization” of North Korea.

Kennedy, who had gone into the meeting hoping to reduce the threat of nuclear war, came face-to-face with the reality of a brutal and intransigent communist regime. The Vienna summit was viewed at the time as a victory for Khrushchev; but in retrospect, it was the beginning of the turn-around for Kennedy’s foreign policy. When Khrushchev threatened war over Berlin, Kennedy was shaken but unbowed. Kennedy informed the Soviet leader that if Khrushchev wanted war he would get it. From that point on, Kennedy never lost the desire to reduce nuclear tensions but he pursued his ends through a hardheaded position of strength. After backing down Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was able to negotiate a ban on atmospheric nuclear testing and began the process of patient and measured confrontation with the Soviet Union that continued under his successors until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. President Trump obviously also had hopes of reducing nuclear tensions going into his Hanoi summit with North Korea’s Mr. Kim. As was the case with the Vienna summit, the media portrayal of Hanoi was of a presidential defeat. Mr. Trump had put a lot of work into smoothing the path. Like Kennedy before him, Mr. Trump found that goodwill is not enough in dealing with totalitarian leaders, and like Kennedy, he did not back down. Mr. Kim was offering crumbs while keeping his nukes and Mr. Trump wisely walked out. Like Kennedy, he did not burn his bridges. Instead of making an issue of the Otto Warmbier case, Mr. Trump accepted Mr. Kim’s flimsy explanation that he didn’t know what was going on. The sanctions against North Korea stand, and Mr. Trump has set the stage for a continued long-range carrot and stick approach.

President Trump has often been compared to Richard Nixon, both favorably and unfavorably. The president’s initial opening to North Korea harkened to Nixon’s overtures to Communist China while the recent Michael Cohen hearings bring back memories of Watergate to those old enough to remember the 1970s. However, Mr. Trump’s recent meeting with Kim Jong-un puts me in mind of the early months of the administration of John F. Kennedy. Most people who didn’t live through the years of Kennedy’s “New Frontier” only know him by the fact that he was assassinated and that he and his wife ran a self-styled “Camelot.” Some also vaguely know that Kennedy’s greatest foreign policy achievement was his handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, which took the world perilously close to thermonuclear war. Largely forgotten is the rocky first year of the Kennedy presidency from a foreign policy standpoint. Like Mr. Trump, Kennedy came into office being viewed as an inexperienced foreign policy lightweight. His first major national security crisis was the Bay of Pigs debacle in which an American-sponsored invasion of Communist Cuba failed ignominiously. Like Mr. Trump, Kennedy believed that our European allies were not doing enough to provide for their own defense and letting the United States do the heavy lifting. As was the case with Kennedy, Mr. Trump’s first meeting with a Russian leader was widely seen as being dominated by the Russian. When Kennedy met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, Kennedy was seen as having been bullied by the Russian premier, who blatantly threatened to reunite Berlin in divided Germany by force.

Socialism,” we are told by the pollsters, is gaining in popularity at least the romanticized versions of it. It would be a world without poverty where people have everything they need, and all are equal. The fact that such a system has never existed is attributed to either bad motives or incompetence of those who were supposed to bring it about. Sweden and many other democratic countries who flirted with it for a short period of time all backed away as they quickly recognized its failings. Advocates for socialism have a problem naming the specific person who is supposed to pay their medical, school, and food and shelter bills. They often say the “rich” ? as if there were millions of random rich people floating around just waiting to have their wealth plucked by some student. When socialists are interviewed by members of the press, they are prone to say things like “every American deserves free health care.” Somewhere, I have missed the explanation of why some deserve free health care to be paid by hard-working taxpayers. If we are all equal, as the socialists tell us, why are some involuntary slaves to others, at least part time? Fortunately, I don’t have to figure this out because, back in 1945, the English author George Orwell did it for me and everyone else in his classic book “Animal Farm.” The socialists sell “free stuff” ? in reality, the theft of labor from others, which has great appeal to the uninformed and the lazy. Somewhere between 100 million and 200 million people were killed by their own socialist governments during the 20th century. That is the real burden of what the ignorance of socialism has wrought.

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a major threat to the continued existence of America. An enemy could destroy our nation simply by detonating a single nuclear weapon above the atmosphere over our country. The electromagnetic pulse from this detonation would destroy our national electric power grid, and it would take many months or years to rebuild it. Protection from this threat would be relatively simple and affordable, but for decades our leaders have refused to take action. This is because of near-total disagreement over the threat. The tragedy is that those who support protection against EMP know what they’re talking about, and those who deny the threat don’t. The foremost government laboratory involved was the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). It was America’s national laboratory for nuclear weapons effects, just as Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia were our national laboratories for nuclear weapons design. DNA’s function was to ensure that America’s military knew absolutely everything knowable about the many effects of nuclear weapons. The Cold War ended in 1992, and many things happened. No enemies were in sight, so an undeclared nuclear freeze was established. Our leaders slashed weapons budgets and stopped all new nuclear programs. DNA was shut down in 1997. Most of DNA’s massive library of EMP scientific data is in cold storage somewhere. In 2001, a few alert congressmen established the EMP Commission to advise the nation of the seriousness of the threat and the essential defensive actions. Over the past 17 years, this EMP Commission has produced many vital reports, clearly demonstrating that EMP can destroy America and kill many tens of millions, and that it can be defended against by measures which ? although expensive - are well within our means.

In the United States, surveys show that many millennials are not merely soft on socialism but openly support it. They think capitalism benefits only the “1 percent” and no one else, despite America’s matchless record of upward mobility and prosperity. Since the 1960s, the media, Hollywood and the education system have presented a warped view of America along with a sugarcoated version of socialism. So, we should not be surprised when we see so many young people fooled by the false promises of redistributive economics. Socialism is a variant of Marxism, whose most virulent form is communism, symbolized by the color red. The universal result of such regimes is economic stagnation, confiscation of property, rule by the few, mass emigration and even mass murder. While the media is busy trying to turn America into yet another failed state, our homegrown Democratic Socialists seem oblivious to glaring examples of the consequences of such a transformation in communist Cuba or another in fast-becoming communist Venezuela. Under the Castro regime, Cuba became and still is an economic basket case with jails full of dissidents. Venezuela’s socialism has created one of the worst inflation rates in the world. Thousands of starving Venezuelans are pouring over the border and threatening to destabilize Colombia and beyond. After the United States defeated National Socialism and fascism in World War II and then communism in the Cold War, many Americans thought our God-fearing country was pretty well insulated from socialist insanity. But unless they are reminded, people have short memories. The shocking affection for socialism among the nation’s young adults shows that much work remains to set the record straight.

Witness a year ago when Mr. Trump stunned many foreign policy observers by deciding not to visit Israel first but rather Saudi Arabia, where he received a royal welcome from Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The president wasted no time telling the Saudis and other assembled Gulf State potentates that they had to deal forcibly with terror and confront the pre-eminent evil in the region, Iran. The message and the messenger were clear. Indeed, it seems youthful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has taken a cue from Mr. Trump’s blunt style. He recently declared that Israel has “the right to have their own land” and that formal relations between Israel and the kingdom could be mutually beneficial, a remarkable admission from a major Arab player. Moreover, the crown prince stunned a Jewish organization in New York last month by asserting “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after another and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” Saudi Arabia’s immediate concern is Iran, who they do not trust. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel are delighted that Mr. Trump has withdrawn from the Iranian nuclear deal that President Obama foolishly embraced. Iranian adventurism in Syria and Lebanon has long threatened Israel. Meanwhile, Iranian support for fellow Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen poses a direct threat to Sunni Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has given every indication that it’s willing to engage in reshaping conditions in the Middle East. That includes its posture with Israel, which controls that third high-holy site, the Al Aqsa Mosque and Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem.

The second possibility is that the trade war goes too well and Mr. Xi faces domestic upheaval due to the Chinese economy bottoming out. This could happen because of China’s continuing top-down control over much of its economy and its massive government debt estimated to be between 255.7 percent and 300 percent of its gross domestic product. What if Xi refuses to back down in this situation? For instance, recall the standoff between North Korea in the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018, before the first summit between Mr. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June 2018. All it would take is a false missile alert, a clash between two ships or planes or some kind of accident to cause one side to think it was under attack. Most leaders derive their legitimacy from prosperity and defense of their people and territory. Mr. Xi does not have the legitimacy of an election and the Chinese Communist Party has built its rule on the economy and nationalism. If Mr. Xi no longer has prosperity to stand on, he could choose to stoke nationalism in order to maintain power. A show of force to rally China around the flag could turn into a military misadventure. After all, Beijing’s military regularly mulls over how it could “win” a quick war against America and then make peace. Such plans sound eerily similar to the gamble of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Habor in response to American sanctions over U.S. oil exports. Ultimately, America is right to defend against China’s illegal trade practices, but it should not come at the expense of America’s prosperity and security. Washington should pursue a realistic, interests-based strategy to address the strategic challenge from China.