RUTHFULLY YOURS

American and South Korean officials have said for over a year that North Korea would be able, within a very short time, to miniaturize a nuclear device, mount it on an intercontinental ballistic missile and hit the continental United States. The country’s test launch Tuesday didn’t conclusively demonstrate that Pyongyang has reached this point, but Alaska and Hawaii might already be within range — and US forces in South Korea and Japan certainly are.

This isn’t the first time the North has marked the Fourth with fireworks. On July 4, 2006, a North Korean short-range missile barrage broke a seven-year moratorium, stemming from a 1998 Taepo-Dong missile launch that landed in the Pacific east of Japan. Tokyo responded angrily, leading Pyongyang to declare the moratorium (though it continued static-rocket testing), ironically gaining a propaganda victory.

In addition, the North substantially increased ballistic-missile cooperation with Iran, begun earlier in the decade, a logical choice since both countries were relying upon the same Soviet-era Scud missile technology, and because their missile objectives were the same: acquiring delivery capabilities for nuclear warheads.

This longstanding cooperation on delivery systems, almost certainly mirrored in comparable cooperation on nuclear weapons, is one reason North Korea threatens not only the United States and East Asia, but the entire world. In strategic terms, this threat is already here. Unfortunately, we should have realized its seriousness decades ago to prevent it from maturing.

A South Korean navy ship fires a missile during a drill aimed to counter North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile test, on July 6, 2017 in East Sea, South Korea. (Photo by South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images)

It’s clear that nearly 25 years of diplomatic efforts, even when accompanied by economic sanctions, have failed. President Trump seemed to continue the “carrots and sticks” approach, first with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and more recently during South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Washington visit.

As he has said subsequently, however, we must shift to a more productive approach. China has been playing the United States while doing next to nothing to reverse the North’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. Indeed, there’s every reason to believe Beijing has at best turned a blind eye to willful violations of international sanctions and its own commitments, allowing Chinese enterprises and individuals to enable Pyongyang.

In response, many contend we should impose economic sanctions against China, pressuring it to pressure North Korea. While superficially attractive, this policy will inevitably fail.

Because, however, the failure will take time to become evident, sanctioning China will simply buy still more time for Pyongyang to advance its programs.

China’s economy is so large that targeted sanctions against named individuals and institutions can have only minimal consequences. They will also suffer the common fate of such sanctions, being very easily evaded by establishing “cut outs” carrying on precisely the same activities under new names.

It was not so long ago that the president dismissed NATO as “obsolete.” President Trump’s campaign promise of an “America First” foreign policy spurred some to fear an America turned inward, shunning the post-World War II international order and its concomitant transatlantic commitments.

In a speech on Thursday, however, Trump seemed to lay to rest any notions of a drastic rebalance. Poland will receive Patriot missile-defense systems from the United States, a departure from President Obama’s policy and a move sure to rankle Russian president Vladimir Putin. Arguably as notable as this was how Trump transformed his prior concerns about NATO into a hopeful, yet still cautious, message for uniting Europe in defense of Western civilization:

The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

Instead of just enumerating common threats like radical Islamist terrorism or even Russian aggression in Ukraine, Trump appealed to the European soul. After painting a portrait of Poland as a longsuffering, but unbreakable, nation, he asked for renewed resolve from the rest of the continent:

We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will. Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have.

He also asserted that the United States stands with Europe in the quest to preserve a common civilizational heritage:

We must work together to confront forces, whether they come inside or out, from the south or the east, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition that make us who we are.

The White House description of Donald Trump’s speech Thursday in Warsaw was simply, “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland.” In truth, Mr. Trump’s remarks were directed at the people of the world. Six months into his first term of office, Mr. Trump finally offered the core of what could become a governing philosophy. It is a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition.

To be sure, Mr. Trump’s speech also contained several pointed and welcome foreign-policy statements. He assured Poland it would not be held hostage to a single supplier of energy, meaning Russia. He exhorted Russia to stop destabilizing Ukraine “and elsewhere,” to stop supporting Syria and Iran and “instead join the community of responsible nations.” He explicitly committed to NATO’s Article 5 on mutual defense.

But—and this shocked Washington—the speech aimed higher. Like the best presidential speeches, it contained affirmations of ideas and principles and related them to the current political moment. “Americans, Poles and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,” he said. This was more than a speech, though. It was an argument. One might even call it an apologia for the West.

Mr. Trump built his argument out of Poland’s place in the history of the West, both as a source of its culture—Copernicus, Chopin—and as a physical and spiritual battlefield, especially during World War II. The word Mr. Trump came back to repeatedly to define this experience was “threat.”

During and after the war, Poland survived threats to its existence from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Mr. Trump believes that the West today confronts threats of a different sort, threats both physical and cultural. “This continent,” said Mr. Trump, “no longer confronts the specter of communism. But today we’re in the West, and we have to say there are dire threats to our security and to our way of life.”

He identified the most immediate security threat as an “oppressive ideology.” He was talking about radical Islam, but it is worth noting that he never mentioned radical Islam or Islamic State. Instead, he described the recent commitment by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to combat an ideological menace that threatens the world with terrorism. He compared this idea of mutual defense to the alliance of free nations that defeated Nazism and communism.

But the speech’s most provocative argument was about our way of life. It came when he described how a million Poles stood with Pope John Paul II in Victory Square in 1979 to resist Soviet rule by chanting, “We want God!”

“With that powerful declaration of who you are,” Mr. Trump said, “you came to understand what to do and how to live.”

This is a warning to the West and a call to action. By remembering the Poles’ invocation of God, Mr. Trump is clearly aligning himself with the same warning issued to Europe some years ago by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict.

U.S. forces have been instructed to take all measures needed to protect American interests in Syria, including military measures, as part of an effort that comes after top officials in the Trump administration assessed that Iran is deliberately probing American weaknesses and reactions on the Syrian battlefield, according to senior Trump administration officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

Iran-backed forces, including Hezbollah, have already initiated multiple encounters with the United States by violating agreements worked out between Washington and Moscow aimed at preventing the various factions targeting ISIS inside Syria from coming into conflict. This is part of a campaign that analysts inside and outside the White House believe is aimed at testing the Trump administration’s resolve, sources said.

“That was very clearly a process of the Iranians and Hezbollah and [the] Syrian regime probing and testing our limits, and testing how much we were willing to do,” one senior Trump administration official said. “In every case, it was a matter of them testing and probing, and us responding by defending ourselves.”

These clashes were the result of pro-Syrian regime forces, including Iran and Hezbollah, “violating a de-confliction measure that had been worked out with the Russians,” the official said. “The forces violated the measure.”

The Trump administration has instructed U.S. forces to respond to Iranian attacks with force if necessary.

“What they found out very quickly,” said the official, was “us responding by defending ourselves. What was established was that we’re determined to defend ourselves.”

This defensive action is being implemented at the same time the Trump administration turns its attention to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Islamic Republic’s paramilitary force that coordinates operations in Syria and other warzones.

Trump administration officials view the IRGC as being part of “every malignant protrusion of the Iranian regime,” according to one administration official, who said the White House is dually focused on choking off this force.

The actions by U.S. forces are part of a broader pushback against Iran, ranging from battlefield responses to diplomatic action, according to a veteran Iran policy analyst who has been briefed by the White House both on parts of the Syria strategy and on parts of an ongoing Iran policy review being conducted by the administration.

The Free Beacon first reported many details of the review several weeks ago, including actions by the Trump administration to potentially block the sale of U.S. commercial aircraft to Tehran.

“For the first time since the U.S. intervened into the Syrian conflict, American forces have been authorized to do take all measures to defend U.S. interests against Iranian provocations and aggression,” said the source. “This is part of a concrete strategy that has already been implemented in part, and is being bolstered every day, but very senior Trump officials. No more of watching U.S. forces get rolled in Syria, and also no more of thanking Iran after they seize our sailors in the Gulf.

One senior Trump administration official familiar with the Iran policy review said the White House is currently “in the thick of it,” evaluating a range of options to confront Iran’s global terror operations.

The review expands far beyond the landmark nuclear deal, according to the administration officials.

Next week’s G-20 meeting in Hamburg promises to be more interesting than usual. The expected unhinged leftist crowds are already much in evidence and could be counted on for a dose of violence and turmoil. More seriously, this time the fireworks are more likely to come from inside the conference rooms than outside. In preparation for the event, the German chancellor Angela Merkel has already accused Trump of “Abshottung” (door closure or foreclosure) and promised to challenge him directly on a number of issues. Whether she already feels like the leader of the free world (as many pundits are trying to convince her that she actually is), or not is unclear, but she obviously has Trump in mind when she argues that “abshottung” from “climate change, terrorism and migration” is a huge mistake, or when she promises to conduct negotiations “so that they serve the Paris Agreements.” No wonder her party’s election platform for the first time does not mention America as Germany’s key ally and friend.

If there was any surprise in this, it came earlier when the German chancellor openly sided with a blatantly pro-Russian project called Nord Stream 2 that could seriously damage the European Union. Like Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 is a Russian diversionary pipeline designed to bypass Ukraine and Eastern Europe, damage them financially, and enhance Putin’s political clout and the dependence of Western Europe on Gazprom. This was clearly seen as a provocation by the U.S. Senate, which voted 97 to 2 to impose sanctions on any company participating in this scheme. Yet, Angela Merkel and her socialist coalition partners, whose former party boss and current Putin lackey, Gerhard Schroeder, is the president of Nord Stream 2, promptly warned the U.S. to mind its own business. In doing that, Merkel, disregarded the vigorous protests of 13 Eastern European countries and those of the European Energy Union, which clearly cannot coexist with Nord Stream 2. This is yet another disturbing case where the dominant power in the EU has disregarded the interests of its EU partners to curry favor with Putin. Perhaps, somebody should have told Mrs. Merkel that blatantly disregarding the bipartisan will of the American Senate is never a smart idea on the part of somebody who still depends on the United States for its security.

Whatever the case, President Trump needs to be prepared for a hostile reception. It will help him to know a bit more about who Frau Merkel is as a politician and what exactly she stands for. So far, he has challenged her on Germany’s huge trade surplus with the United States, which is not smart and makes him look like a petty mercantilist. The reason for that is that while Germany does have a huge trade surplus with us, it is a relatively underdeveloped country in information technology, high tech, and financial services, where the U.S. can and does run circles around it. It could easily be proven, for instance, that when digital and financial services, licensing revenues, and investment returns are emphasized, the U.S. runs a much bigger surplus than the Germans do in trade.

The fact is that while Trump may not be quite right on the German trade surplus and its causes, Merkel’s 12-year rule in Germany has, for the most part, been unsuccessful, not to say disastrous. To start with, it was under Merkel’s leadership that Germany abruptly decided to ban nuclear power on the absurd assumption that the Fukushima disaster could repeat itself in Germany, a country that has never had a tsunami or an earthquake larger than 5 on the Richter scale. This irrational decision by the chancellor to do away with a legitimate industry that produced 25% of the country’s clean and inexpensive energy, apart from its dubious legality and lack of scientific and economic rationale, led to greater dependence on Russian gas and made inevitable the ‘energy transition’ (Energiewende) to renewable energy, whose disastrous consequences are only now coming into focus. Suffice it to say that the Germans already pay three times more than Americans (twice as much as the French) for their electricity, including a surcharge that is twice the market price of a kilowatt hour.

On Tuesday, North Korea launched what it called a Hwasong-14.

The missile flew only a little more than 550 miles downrange but reached an altitude of 1,740 miles. Fired on a normal trajectory, the Hwasong-14 would have traveled at least 4,100 miles.

The missile was not, as Pyongyang claimed, “capable of hitting any part of the world,” but it was an intercontinental ballistic missile and able to reach the fringes of the American homeland, all of Alaska and the approaches to the main islands of Hawaii.

The ICBM test sets up a confrontation, not just between the U.S. and North Korea but also between the U.S. and China.

In his televised New Year’s Day message this year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un suggested his regime would soon conduct an “intercontinental ballistic rocket launch,” in other words, a missile test.

One day later, President-elect Trump tweeted this: “It won’t happen!”

It just did. And to add insult to injury, it happened on July 4.

So now that the Norks have unmistakably defied Trump, there are two things in particular to watch in the coming days. First, analysts will be seeing how the White House handles the Chinese.

The U.S. is trying to rally the international community and, as part of this effort, has called for a closed-door UN Security Council session, now scheduled for Wednesday.

If the past is any guide, China, along with junior partner Russia, will try to stall and water down measures proposed by the U.S. In the past, Chinese rearguard actions helped North Korea because Washington, although insisting it had the right to act beyond UN measures, rarely did so.

Trump, however, has made it clear that the U.S. will act alone to defend itself. And this missile test, much more than the others this year, is perceived as putting Americans at risk.

If Beijing resorts to its old playbook, it risks Trump imposing severe costs. This week, after all, follows a series of decisive actions against a China that disappointed Trump over not doing more to defang North Korea.

From Monday to Thursday, Trump hammered Beijing. On Monday, the American president welcomed the leader of China’s adversary, India, to the White House in an unmistakable signal to the Chinese. On Tuesday, the State Department dropped China to the worst ranking—Tier 3—in its annual Trafficking in Persons report. On Thursday, the Treasury Department sawed off the Bank of Dandong, a shady Chinese bank, from the global financial system and sanctioned a Chinese shipping company and two Chinese individuals. That same day, the administration notified Congress of a proposed sale of arms to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province.

And on Sunday Trump iced the cake when a U.S. Navy destroyer, the Stethem, passed close by a Chinese-held island in the South China Sea in a “freedom of navigation” exercise that enraged Beijing.

If the Chinese do not come around fast at the Security Council, they could find themselves the target of more Trump actions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s statement on the missile launch looks as if the administration is targeting North Korea’s enablers as much as the North itself. A renewed campaign against Beijing will signal that last week’s actions were indeed the beginning of a tougher approach toward China.

Donald Trump thinks of himself as a great judge of character and master deal-maker, and that could be a dangerous combination when the President meets with Vladimir Putin for the first time Friday during the G-20 meeting in Germany. The Russian strongman respects only strength, not charm, which is what Mr. Trump will have to show if he wants to help U.S. interests abroad and his own at home.

The meeting comes amid the various probes of Russian meddling into the 2016 election, and Mr. Trump’s curious refusal to denounce it. There’s no evidence of Trump-Russia campaign collusion, nor that Russian interference influenced the result. But the Kremlin’s attempt was a deliberate affront to democracy and it has done considerable harm to Mr. Trump’s Presidency. Mr. Trump should be angry at Mr. Putin on America’s behalf, and his apparent insouciance has played into Democratic hands.

The irony is that on policy Mr. Trump has been tougher on Mr. Putin than either of his two predecessors. Over Kremlin objections, the U.S. President has endorsed Montenegro’s entry into NATO and new NATO combat deployments in Eastern Europe. He has approved military action against Russian ally Bashar Assad in Syria even after Russian threats of retaliation.

The White House was also wise to visit Poland a day before he meets Mr. Putin. In Warsaw on Thursday he can reinforce traditional American support for Polish freedom and assert his personal and public support for NATO’s Article 5 that an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Trump has unleashed U.S. oil and gas production that has the potential to weaken Mr. Putin at home and in Europe. The Russian strongman needs high oil prices and wields the leverage of natural-gas supplies over Europe, and U.S. production undermines both.

Yet Mr. Putin will be looking to see if he can leverage Mr. Trump’s desire for better U.S.-Russia relations to gain unilateral concessions. One Kremlin priority is easing Western sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine and President Obama’s December 2016 sanctions for its election interference. The Russian foreign ministry is in particular demanding that the U.S. let Russia reopen compounds in Maryland and New York that Mr. Obama shut down.

Mr. Trump will be tempted to oblige because the compounds are ultimately of no great consequence, but the political symbolism of reopening them would still be damaging if the President gets nothing in return. Mr. Putin still denies any Russian election hacking, and to adapt Michael Corleone’s line to Carlo in “The Godfather Part II,” he should stop lying because it insults our intelligence. Mr. Trump should at least follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s precedent and issue a face-to-face public rebuke unless Mr. Putin apologizes.