There isn’t a military solution to North Korea (and the American public agrees)

At the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, South Korea’s president urged world leaders to bring the seventy-year old Korean War to a formal end.

Despite America’s pivotal role in the conflict—and its lasting impact on American democracy—the Korean War is a forgotten chapter in American history. Five million soldiers and civilians died from the war, which began in 1950 and never officially ended. The fifty-five boxes of remains of missing Korean War service members that North Koreans returned to the United States in 2018 is a stark reminder of the absence of closure from that original forever war.

Why hasn’t it ended? For the United States, establishment policymakers in Washington stand in the way. But prospects for peace have a powerful ally: American voters.

Whoever is elected as president this November should follow through on President Trump’s commitment to transform U.S.-North Korea relations. The first step is declaring the Korean War over and taking concrete steps to establish peace between the main actors of the conflict: the United States, North Korea, South Korea, and China. But to surpass the stronghold in Washington, which binds America to policies of confrontation on the Korean peninsula, there has to be a domestic constituency big enough that says no to these endless wars and yes to strong diplomatic engagement. Luckily, that base is growing, and it is bipartisan.

Read the full article in The National Interest.