“The United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year,” warned President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry in a pointed interview with the Washington Post last week. He’s not the prominent Korea watcher ringing alarm bells. Mohamed ElBaradi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is calling the situation in North Korea “the most immediate and most serious threat to the nuclear nonproliferation regime.” On Sunday, The New York Times reported there is strong evidence North Korea has built a second, secret plant for producing weapons-grade plutonium. That allegation comes 11 days after North Korea announced it has completed reprocessing eight-thousand fuel rods, enough to make half a dozen nuclear weapons.

Tonight, On Point: The crisis Washington doesn’t need. North Korea and America’s quickening drift toward war.

Guests:

Jonathan Pollack, Chair of strategic studies at the Naval War College

Paul Bracken, professor of management and political science at Yale University, author of “Fire in the East”

Kadie Oh, Korea specialist at the Institute for Defense Analyses and author of “North Korea through the Looking Glass”

Jack Beatty, On Point News Analyst