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“We've spent decades, first imagining that North Korea was just going to collapse on its own, then imagining that they wouldn't be able to master nuclear weapons, then imagining that they wouldn't be able to master the ability to deliver them over longer ranges. And we are where we are, but I think we need to pay attention to this allure, which still exists, of wishful thinking, to imagine a world as we wish it was, not the world as it is. As far as North Korea's concerned, I think we are going to have to be more active in deterring North Korea. We're also going to need to be more active in reassuring our allies. And in the end, that may prove to be the more difficult of the two tasks.” — Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

America is suffering from a strategy deficit in the South China Sea. For nearly a decade—and at accelerated speed since 2014—Beijing has been salami slicing its way to a position of primacy in that critical international waterway, while eroding the norms and interests Washington long has sought to defend. To date, however, Washington has struggled to articulate an effective response. The Obama administration opposed Chinese maritime expansion rhetorically and worked to improve the overall American military and geopolitical posture in the Asia-Pacific. Yet the administration only occasionally mustered the leverage necessary to check China’s quest for dominance of the South China Sea, and often it was unable even to impose substantial long-term costs on Beijing for its short-term assertiveness. For its part, the Trump administration has yet to formulate or implement a coherent South China Sea strategy, and it has swung from suggesting that America might deny Chinese access to islands in the South China Sea physically—something approaching an act of war—to appearing subsequently to deprioritize the issue.

Bryan Clark, a retired U.S. Navy undersea warfare officer and analyst the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, suggested that while the requisite missile ejection technologies are difficult to master, it is probably not beyond the capabilities of North Korean engineers.

The research concluded that Russia’s and China’s sophisticated long-range sensor and weapon networks along their borders and in occupied lands create a “strategic problem” for the United States, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who participated in the wargame.

Trump truthfully argues he was dealt a bad hand on North Korea. “North Korea is one of the most difficult national security problems. In all honesty, no administration dating back to Bush 41 has handled it particularly well,” said Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Turkey and a veteran State Department official. “Having said all that, it is a very dangerous situation that requires persistent alliance management, clear objectives and follow-through, not overheated rhetoric from the commander in chief, constantly shifting red lines, taunting tweets, and meaningless bravado that undercuts deterrence and the credibility of our alliance commitments.” In other words, Trump is arguably making a bad situation much worse.

A great example comes from a 2011 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary [Assessments], which shows it wouldn’t take much strategic sophistication to beat U.S. missile defenses—just some basic math