North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear program is the most urgent national security challenge facing the United States and Washington has few good options for addressing it. Most recent commentary and analysis has focused on the prospects of either a near-term conflict or a diplomatic way out. That focus is understandable, but fixates on the two least likely outcomes. Rather than preparing for diplomatic or war fighting scenarios with a nuclear-armed North Korea, the United States should be preparing for a sustained period of deterrence, coercive diplomacy, and rollback. This is the best approach to achieve the international community’s long-stated goal of the eventual peaceful denuclearization and reunification of the Korean Peninsula at an acceptable cost.

Megan Reiss is senior national security fellow with the R Street Institute, where she writes about cybersecurity and other pressing national security issues.

Megan joined R Street in September 2017 from Office of U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., for whom she was also a senior national security fellow. Before that, she was co-manager of the William P. Clements Jr. Papers Project, a collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin’s Clements Center for National Security and its Briscoe Center for American History.

Earlier in her career, she was a research associate at the Hoover Institution.

Megan has a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford University; an LLM in international criminal justice and armed conflict from the University of Nottingham School of Law; and a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

A South Dakota native, she lives in Arlington, Virginia.

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