The overhyped reaction to the firing of a missile that had insufficient range to hit the United States is just another episode in what is North Korea’s slapdash “Wile E. Coyote”-style weapons program. The good news is that it will probably be three to five years before North Korea can make a long-range missile that can reach the continental United States with a nuclear warhead and all the other required technological advancements (for example, a heat shield that will withstand re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere). The bad news is that the United States does not have a viable policy toward North Korea to even hope to impede those adverse developments.

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Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office.

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