North Korea regularly threatens to turn the United States and neighboring states into “a sea of fire,” and reportedly has the capability now to launch nuclear weapons at targets in South Korea and Japan.

In a televised address this New Year’s Day, North Korea’s eccentric leader, Kim Jong Un, claimed that preparations were nearly complete for testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of striking the United States. A former senior North Korean official, Thai Yong-ho, stated that Kim Jong Un’s priority is to complete the development of nuclear weapons in 2017 “at all costs.”

While some U.S. officials maintain that North Korea does not yet have a nuclear ICBM, (then) Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently acknowledged “unprecedented” North Korean nuclear and missile activity in 2016, and that the North Korean nuclear missile threat grows by the day.

In September 2016, James Clapper,(former director) the (then)director of National Intelligence stated that the U.S. must assume that North Korea can reach the United States with a nuclear missile, and in October, Mr. Clapper added that persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons was “probably a lost cause.”

North Korean nuclear missile threats to the United States must no longer elicit uneasy disdain. The Hawaiian Islands and West Coast may well be North Korea’s initial ICBM targets in the United States given their closer relative proximity to North Korean launch sites.

A U.S. offensive military strike against a threatening North Korean nuclear missile, although recommended in the past by some senior U.S. civilian officials, would likely initiate a devastating war on the Korean Peninsula that could draw in China.

Fortunately, U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) offers an immediately-available counter to a North Korea ICBM that does not entail the risk of launching a new Korean War.