North Korea will continue to take advantage of American weakness to expand its nuclear arsenal unless the United States changes course and uses the leverage it has to serve as a legitimate deterrence to Pyongyang's aggression, retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Monday.
In response to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordering over the weekend the "exponential" expansion of his country's nuclear arsenal and the development of a new, more powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, Holt told Newsmax's "Wake Up America" that the North Koreans "are going to take as much as they can possible get in this age of American weakness.
He added that the U.S. "national security team that took their chairs at the start of this administration, through all of these failures, continue to sit there and we're still waiting for the diplomacy to flow in all directions."
Holt, a former deputy military representative to NATO, continued by asking, "Where are the levers that we have to deter this type of aggression? If we think that we don't have leverage or are helpless, that is absolutely not the case," stressing that the U.S. must start using the tools it has at its disposal against North Korea.
Holt tied in the danger from Pyongyang with the war in Ukraine and Russia's use of Iranian drones in that conflict.
"No one should be blind to the cooperation between Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China," Holt said. "The four are working together" no matter what the denials, and he emphasized that "we should now be actively championing the deterrence of these foes."
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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