Intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as the one tested by North Korea this week, fly far too high and fast for current missile defence systems to engage with.
The key question is whether North Korea does have nuclear weapons that it can readily use against the United States and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan.
Any intensification of the military tension between North Korea and the United States would be calamitous, and requires a patient, innovative and informed approach by policymakers.
Regardless of how the US sending an aircraft carrier group to the Korean Peninsula plays out, the international community will ultimately have to accept and learn to manage a nuclear North Korea.
Beyond her own personal humiliation, the ramifications of Park’s fall are already reverberating from domestic South Korean politics into the fraught geopolitics of Northeast Asia.
Tensions in Asia may soon boil over. If U.S. leaders fail to seek pathways to peace, the consequences may be grim, warns former National Security Council member.
North Korea remains committed to perfecting a deployable nuclear weapon capability. It is confident in the understanding that there appears little the international community can do to prevent it.