U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley's remarks last week at the United Nations after North Korea's latest missile test sounded like what a superpower should say. If war comes, "the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed." If China doesn't cut off oil to the Hermit Kingdom, "we can take the oil situation into our own hands."
It would have been a great speech in 1997. That was when signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty were loath to violate it. It was before North Korea had tested its first nuclear device. It was before the U.S. cut a deal with Iran to overlook its past nuclear transgressions in exchange for a temporary freeze on its nuclear program and a free pass to test missiles.
In 2017, though, Haley's warnings and the cruder ones from her boss, President Donald Trump, are disconnected from reality. And here it's important to remember why the president and his envoys are making threats in the first place. All of this is in the service of a discredited policy to not allow North Korea to obtain a nuclear weapon. The idea has been to threaten, coddle and tempt Kim Jong Un to start negotiations that would lead to him abandoning them.