Our Number one Interest and Priority Is to Defend Our Homeland

Our number one interest and priority is to defend our homeland. Weapons of mass destruction is the most significant threat to the United States in now and in the future. The threat of WMD is that they are intended to cause death or harm to a large mass of people or place. This could be through toxic or poison, disease, radiation, biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological devices or exposures. North Korea being our biggest threat. In 2017 Kim Jong Un announced intentions to launch long range ballistic missiles that were capable of reaching the US. During this year North Korea overcame barriers that had previously halted its quest. But by the end of the year (2017) they had launched a solid fueled missile. A month later North Korea test launched 4 missiles at once and a few months later they launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile. This launch flew over 1,700 miles into space and landed in water east of the peninsula, then a week later they launched another this one flew higher and went farther. At this point our President Trump made a statement they North Korea would be met with “fire and fury like the world had never seen.” North Korea fired back threatening targets to Guam and later cancelled them.

Our background with North Korea has been up and down. In 1985 The Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed. This was put in place to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.  In 1992 the Joint Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was signed which was an agreement that North and South Korea would not test, manufacture, produce receive, posses, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons. A year later there was suspicion that North Korea was violating this. In 1994 they promised to stop plutonium production in exchange for supplies. A few years later we find that they have been secretly enriching uranium. North Korea withdrawals from the Nonproliferation treaty in 2003. Last in 2012, North Korea agrees to suspend nuclear test in exchange for food aid. A few weeks later they announce plans to launch a satellite.  

The Worldwide Threat Assessment for 2018 states that “The most immediate threats of regional interstate conflict in the next year come from North Korea and from Saudi- Iranian use of proxies in their rivalry... North Korea will be among the most volatile and confrontational WMD threats to the United States over the next year.” (Coats, 2018) “North Korea is committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States. It also conducted its sixth and highest yield nuclear test to date.” (Coats, 2018)

There is nothing denying how we are no longer a sanctuary, we are a target as this country seeks to develop and test WMD, nuclear, chemical, and biological, and long-range capabilities. Our nations objectives are to defend our homeland from attack, deter our enemies from aggression against our vital interests, preventing, our enemies from acquiring, proliferating, or using weapons of mass destruction, and preventing terrorist’s operations.

        Changes to our US foreign policy should be made to help better protect us in the future. The first thing that we can change or update is our technology. We need better technological power. Drones are useful items for military operations as well as for our government. For our military they can protect lives, give life feed from a far, used for tracking, rescue, searches, and back up. Having the best technologically advanced drones could help by preventing human harm by using these unmanned systems. They would be useful in our government in doing research, safety, and tailored to each organization’s needs. They have been a critical part of our military since 9/11 and with better updates, smaller, longer lasting, and undetectable could be a great advantage for us especially with our current and future threat of North Korea and by using state of the art drone technology we can. North Korea could already be at an advantaged with better technology than the US. we need to be certain that that is never the case. With the missile threats from them if we had technology to stop them with these high-tech drones that would saves lives. We could stop the missiles in space or even stop it before it happens by having these drones over the area they are testing and targeting. There is so much we can do with this technology so much you can add to them to change their dynamics to not just live stream but to fire and sense. The possibilities are endless we just need to work on it.

        Another change we could make is having a better force and being better prepared for any instance and having better intelligence to include covert actions. In order to prevent war, we have to be ready for it. Our forces need to come to together to gain information and to develop and strengthen our relationships. Our central intelligence needs to collect and analyze counterintelligence. To do this we need to accept and let covert operations handle situations abroad and at home if necessary.

        Strengthening our alliances is also the key to our future. After 9/11 our allies came to our aid to help us in our fight to prevent and capture terrorist. We need to continue to work together and to gain more allies. To do this we need to expand by working with partners to share resources, forces, and capabilities. We cannot impose our way of life but we can uphold our commitments and contribute by investing and modernizing defense capabilities. We can encourage alliances and military investments to expand and collaborative plans.