North Korea is an erratic, irrational, and dangerous regime that does not have the respect for the lethality of nuclear weapons that rational countries have, former Bush administration Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Newsmax.TV on Thursday. North Korea’s only goal is to perpetuate itself, Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld, who just published his 800-page autobiography “Known and Unknown,” said the history of nuclear weapons is amazing.
Story continues below video.
“They’ve been used in 1945, and they’ve not been fired in anger in the remaining 65 years,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s ever been a period in history when a major weapon of that nature and that kind of power, relative power, has existed and not been used in anger in that period of time.”
Rational people have a “respect for the lethality of those weapons,” he said, adding that some countries “march to a different drummer" these days. There is general agreement that North Korea has nuclear weapons, he said.
“We . . . watch their behavior pattern and it is erratic,” he said. “One thing that’s steady is their desire to perpetuate that regime in power. But nonetheless they do things that reasonable countries don’t do, they say things that reasonable countries don’t say. And they have been very aggressive in proliferating the technologies that they’ve developed. So they’re a danger to the world.”
Successive U.S. administrations and allies have “clearly been unsuccessful” in trying to put pressure on North Korea to adopt a more rational course of action just like the United States has not succeeded in altering Iran’s course of action, he said. Only time would tell if North Korea would actually use nuclear weapons, he said.
© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.