Another Threat in the New Year

For John, BLUF:  You pays your money and you takes your chance.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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CFR survey puts N. Korea crisis atop list of international concerns for New Year

CFR is the Council on Foreign Relations, an American Think Tank.  I have a friend, a Classmate from the Air Force Academy, who spent a year there as a Fellow, courtesy of the US Air Force. I talked about the threat that Germany fears it faces, here.

The President and the US Intelligence Community seem to think that our greatest threat is Russia and its cyber attacks, its hacking of computers here in the United States.

This article, from Yonhap News, a Korean news organization,♠ talks to a survey of nearly 500 gray beards,♥ conducted by CFR, which came to the conclusion that North Korea, with its nuclear weapons and missiles and paranoia, is the greatest threat going into the new year.

Here is the lede plus two:

A potential crisis involving North Korea ranked atop the list of international concerns for the United States in the New Year, according to a Council on Foreign Relations survey.

The annual Preventive Priorities Survey put "a severe crisis in North Korea" in the Tier 1 category of concerns, along with a potential military confrontation between Russia and NATO; a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure; and a mass casualty terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland.

The CFR said in the report that a severe crisis in the North could be "caused by nuclear or intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) weapons testing, a military provocation, or internal political instability.

Even though the leader of North Korea, Kim Jung-un, is highly unpredictable, I do think he can be deterred, as long as he doesn't face an internal collapse.  For Kim, and his Father before him (Kim Jung-Il) and his Father before him (Kim Il-sung), regime survival, survival of the Kim family in charge, is job number one.

I think I worry most about a "mass casualty terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland", but I worry even more about a loss of civil rights due to efforts to prevent such an (hypothetical) event.♦

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Why a Korean outlet?  The person who sent it along is someone I would consider a Korean expert and someone who trolls the Korea news outlets.  I don't know it, but I assume he reads and speaks Korean.
♥  They sent the survey to nearly 7,000 folks in Government, in Academia or who were considered foreign policy experts (John Kerry and Hillary Clinton?)
♦  This is not a concern about a President Trump as it is a concern about Government in general.  The tools have already been fashioned by Presidents Obama and Bush and Clinton before him.  Heck it goes back to President Wilson and even President Lincoln.  It is up to the People to set the tone.