• http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/anthony-ruggiero-trump-and-moon-must-unite-to-send-a-tough-message-to-north-korea/
• http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/anthony-ruggiero-trump-acts-against-chinese-bank-for-north-korean-money-laundering/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/world/asia/north-korea-south-us-nuclear-war.html
Analysis: The standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program has long been shaped by the view that the United States has no viable military option to destroy it. Any attempt to do so, many say, would provoke a brutal counterattack against South Korea too bloody and damaging to risk. That remains a major constraint on the Trump administration’s response even as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, approaches his goal of a nuclear arsenal capable of striking the United States. – New York Times
Editorial: The U.S. has held out hope that China’s leaders would see that a nuclear-armed North Korea isn’t in its interests. But Beijing’s behavior suggests that it hopes the North Korean threat will drive the U.S. out of Northeast Asia. Only a much tougher strategy aimed at toppling the Kim regime, with or without China’s help, has a chance of eliminating a threat that puts millions of American lives at risk. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
For the prosecutors preparing for the first court hearings later this month, some of the mysteries behind Kim Jong Nam’s death inside a Malaysian airport terminal will likely never be resolved. But nearly five months after the killing, U.S. and Asian officials have a clearer view of the attack’s significance. In carrying out history’s first state-sponsored VX assassination in a country 3,000 miles from its borders, North Korea has demonstrated a new willingness to use its formidable arsenal of deadly toxins and poisons to kill or intimidate enemies on foreign soil, analysts say. – Washington Post