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Just a few weeks ago, members of the Trump administration praised Kim Jong Un for “coming to his senses” — backing down from firing missiles toward Guam. Now we can clearly see that was presumptuous.

Right now, I’m all excited about college football season kicking off this past weekend, including my Tennessee Volunteers taking the field tonight against Georgia Tech in my hometown of Atlanta. But I can enjoy college football and pay attention to the sociopath in North Korea, too.

This past weekend, the maniacal dictator claimed to have fired off a massive hydrogen bomb. Fox News reported:

North Korea said on Sunday it detonated a hydrogen bomb, possibly triggering an artificial earthquake and prompting immediate condemnation from its neighbors — despite the rogue regime calling the test a “perfect success.”

The blast, carried out at 12:29 p.m. local time at the Punggye-ri site, triggered a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in North Korea that was detected 55 kilometers north northwest of Kimchaek, U.S. Geological Survey reported. Officials in Seoul initially said it was a magnitude 5.7 quake.

David Albright, President of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, one of the leading global experts on North Korea, told Fox News the new test is “alarming.”

“This is a crisis … the size of this device is a city-buster … the yield of this blast is significant …
it could cause significant damage,” Albright said. “It is alarming.”

Albright previously said North Korea has made it a priority to develop thermonuclear weapons. He said on Sunday the recent rest could have been a crude thermo-nuclear device.”

And that’s a bad thing,” Albright said, adding that the rogue nation has moved faster than he expected.

The test was estimated to have a yield of 100 kilotons, meaning a blast that was four to five times more powerful than the explosion in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, a South Korean defense official told the country’s Yonhap News Agency.

Albright said it will still be a challenge for North Korea to develop an ICBM that could hold a hydrogen bomb.

I would think the radical, progressive, socialist environmentalists would be up in arms about North Korea conducting an underground test resulting in an earthquake. Maybe I’m wrong, but I haven’t heard much outcry and condemnation. What’s most disconcerting here is not that Kim Jong Un has conducted another test; it’s the rapid advances they’ve made, as the article says.

I’m one who tends to believe North Korea isn’t achieving this level of success in their missile program without external support … and who could that be?

The first door I’d knock on is China, and therefore we need to stop playing games and implement the toughest of diplomatic and economic sanctions against China. This means we bypass the United Nations, where China and Russia sit on the security council. We must now realize the last sanctions vote that occurred there was just a show-pony vote.

I like to use the metaphor that China is the crack house and North Korea is the pit bull. We’ve got to take down the crack house first and render the pit bull irrelevant. The second door I’d knock on is that of Iran, which just refused any inspection of one of its nuclear sites — so much for that “agreement” Obama made with them.

We must accept there’s collusion — a sharing of technology — between these nations. The speed by which North Korea’s missile program has moved is the greatest issue. This also means the Iranians are advancing as well; remember the recent story we shared about North Korea providing chemical weapons to Syria … meaning Iran. That has to be of grave concern to Israel.

It’s time we economically isolate North Korea from any and all nations. We need to consider how we can conduct a leaflet drop over North Korea, along with broadcasting into that country to undermine Kim’s rule. We should consider navigational restrictions against any ship seeking to enter or depart from North Korea.

Yes, I’m talking about a blockade — choking off North Korea — as sanctions against the country will not have a sufficient impact. Sanctions against those who do business and other economic activities with North Korea will certainly have an impact. It has been far too long — some 24 years — and nothing has changed the attitude and belligerence of North Korea.

Of course, that’s something the new South Korean leader must accept. And we need to ensure we have contingency plans to deal with the most dangerous threat posed by North Korea: the thousands of artillery tubes aimed at South Korea.

We’ve been down this road before in the early to mid-1930s with another sociopathic dictator, Adolf Hitler. There never came a time when the great Western powers accepted that stopping Hitler early would preclude what inevitably led to the deaths of tens of millions. Every day we hesitate — and yes, that means taking preemptive military action, if necessary — is critical.

No foreign policy using diplomatic and economic sanctions is effective unless there’s credible military deterrent.

Firing a missile over another country is unacceptable. Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice’s comments about accepting a nuclear North Korea is unconscionable and delusional. Sadly, there are some people in the world who only understand and respect strength and might … who just need their asses kicked.

Kim Jong Un is at the top of that list.

[Learn more about Allen West’s vision for this nation in his book Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin’s Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom]