On Sunday, North Korea fired eight missiles into the sea. This was barely worth mentioning as a news item since Kim Jong-un has gone back to his old habits of threatening the world with nuclear destruction and showing off the latest toys in his arsenal. (Even if they sometimes fail spectacularly.) Kim needs to keep his people focused on the “ever-present threat of an American invasion” so they won’t notice how many of them are starving to death or being shipped off to concentration camps. What was different this time, however, was the response to his test launches. For the second time in less than a month, the United States and South Korea conducted a joint exercise the following day, launching eight of our own nuclear-capable missiles into the sea off the coast of South Korea. And they made it clear that it was being done in response to the diminutive dictator’s demonstration from the previous day.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries launched eight ballistic missiles into the sea Monday in a show of force matching a North Korean missile display a day earlier that extended a provocative streak in weapons demonstrations.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the allies’ live-fire exercise involved eight Army Tactical Missile System missiles fired into South Korea’s eastern waters across 10 minutes. It said the drill was aimed at demonstrating an ability to respond swiftly and accurately to North Korean attacks.

The South’s military on Sunday detected North Korea firing eight short-range missiles over 35 minutes from at least four different locations, including from western and eastern coastal areas and two inland areas north of and near the capital, Pyongyang, in what appeared to be a single-day record for the country’s ballistic launches.

The same thing happened after a South Korean test launch on May 25th, though it didn’t draw very much media attention. (We were a little busy in Ukraine at the time.) Our normal policy of ignoring Kim’s ranting and ensuring we don’t drive the little maniac toward a military confrontation has clearly been altered. There was a similar response last September, but the South Korean army did that on their own and they only fired one missile. This has prompted some analysts to speculate as to whether the Korean war may be heating back up.

Some of you may be old enough to remember a time way back in 2018 and 2019 when there were no missile launches taking place on the Korean Peninsula and the leaders of the two nations were actually talking to each other (as well as to Donald Trump) and even discussing a formal end to the war. That is all apparently in the rearview mirror now. A game of nuclear chicken is in motion once again.

Let’s take a moment and recap the various pots we currently have boiling on the foreign relations stove. Joe Biden is in the process of sending long-range missiles to Ukraine in a move that Vladimir Putin has said would provoke “a response” that may involve targets they “have never struck before.” Biden has also now made three public statements saying that we would defend Taiwan “militarily” if China invades, signaling a massive shift in our policy toward that region. And the Chinese have clearly not been impressed by his staff’s hurried efforts to clean up his messes. This weekend we saw the third layer on the cake as the American military participated in multiple missile launches only a few dozen miles from the border of a nuclear-armed country that’s being run by a madman who constantly talks about attacking us.

Would anyone from the White House care to explain precisely what our foreign policy is these days? As we’ve already discussed here, it certainly looks for all the world like we are sleepwalking our way into World War 3. There is no question whatsoever that North Korea is a firm member of the New Axis of Evil along with China and Russia. You can throw in Iran and probably Turkey before long for good measure. We are now taking provocative actions in the face of all three of those nuclear-capable nations, in addition to being on the brink of driving Turkey out of NATO and into the arms of the Kremlin. The secretive talks that were supposedly going to convince Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions have effectively collapsed and they’re making threatening sounds as well, on top of firing missiles at us in Iraq.

I don’t want to see the United States backing down in the face of these bad actors in any way, shape, or form. We’re the world’s dominant superpower and a force for good on the planet. But the sort of power we wield comes with responsibilities. We shouldn’t be the ones starting wars. We should be ensuring that our adversaries know that we will finish a war if they start one. The White House seems to be shifting gears in a reckless fashion at this point and both Congress and the American people deserve an explanation as to what the underlying strategy is these days, assuming there is any sane strategy in play at all.