The United States lacks a comprehensive strategy on North Korea, but instead has engaged in "a sanction here, another sanction here," rather than delivering a "shock therapy" to the increasingly aggressive country, former Defense Secretary William Cohen said Tuesday.
"I think we have to get serious about talking about how to change the regime," Cohen, who served under President Bill Clinton, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "We can do that in conjunction with some really serious negotiations with the Russians and specifically the Chinese, or we can start doing it on our own, in terms of going after them financially, going after them, really precluding them from having access to many of the resources they need."
The United States also can go after its allies to determine if there are North Korean workers in their countries, and tell them to tell those people to "get out," said Cohen.
"It may not be a big thing, but it's a symbol that we're sending North Korea's workers back to North Korea so they can't have revenue coming into that country," Cohen said. "It has to be a comprehensive strategy to really bring about the kind of pressure that will either change the course of this regime or change the regime, and I think the latter's probably more likely."
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, who was on the program alongside Cohen, commented that the United States has not exhausted its options on North Korea, and it's important to try and apply intense pressure on the Kim Jong Un regime.
"I just led a delegation up to the North Korean/Chinese border," Markey said. "We could insist that the Chinese cut off the oil. There's been a 22 percent increase in trade between North Korea and China from last July to this July, unbelievable."
China, he continued, is "playing a double game."
"When we deployed the THAAD in South Korea, they punished the south Korean government with a $10 billion hit on the South Korean tourism industry," Markey said. "So, we have to basically deal with China, say we do not want to collapse the North Korean regime. That's their greatest fear, that there will be an influx of refugees from North Korea, and ultimately, the Korean peninsula will be united and there will be a democracy on the Chinese border."
The United States should tell China, he continued, that that is not the intention, and if it cooperates, then there could be a chance to put pressure on the regime.
"We have to go to the table with the North Koreans, as the Chinese have been insisting that we do," said Markey. "We have been rejecting this."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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