Pyongyang Has a Strategy, What About U.S.?

For the past two decades, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has followed a focused and abiding nuclear strategy. The objectives of that strategy are simple and straightforward, yet utterly revolutionary: 1) to develop and amass a credible nuclear arsenal; and 2) to normalize the idea within the "international community" of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

Under a succession of American presidencies (Bush I, Clinton, Bush II) the North Korean government has made irrevocable--sometimes halting, but always irrevocable--progress toward these overarching objectives. Now, on President Obama's watch, it has just taken another momentous step toward consolidating its position as a permanent possessor of atomic weaponry.