The Republican governor of Arkansas and possible presidential candidate must be getting his foreign policy talking points from fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. From the Des Moines Register:
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa Saturday downplayed the threat North Korea's missile testing last week posed to the United States, but discouraged U.S. officials from confronting the actions without strong international collaboration. "They are doing some saber-rattling, but their swords are very dull and very rusty," Huckabee, a Republican weighing a presidential campaign, said about the rogue communist nation as he began a three-day swing through Iowa. Having returned from a trip to South Korea and Japan just days before the test, Huckabee said North Korea's missile technology is so crude that South Koreans are less concerned than Americans about the developments. "They don't really have the weaponry that's advanced enough to have people ducking and covering just yet," he said in an interview. "But this clearly can't be another situation where the U.S. goes it alone."
The governor may want to spend a little more time with Japanese government officials. From today's AP:
Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on the North's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime. Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.