Can North Korea Actually Attack The US? This Expert Says Possibility Is 'Becoming Ever More Likely'

North Korea can't actually hit the United States with a nuclear weapon. Right?

According to Peter Apps, a global affairs columnist for Reuters and executive director of Project for Study of the 21st Century, the likelihood of a successful nuclear attack on the US by North Korea is "becoming ever more likely."

North Korea is "plowing considerable resources" into building its nuclear weapons program but still "has a long way to go." Nevertheless, the country does operate a Musudan rocket that could reach Japan and the U.S. territory and military base of Guam.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un appears unwilling to settle for a rocket that could just reach Guam. He wants a rocket that can fire a nuclear warhead and hit a U.S. city on the West Coast and continues to push his scientists "harder than ever" to deliver a working rocket and warhead that can strike the U.S.

"At worst, U.S. cities on the West Coast would have to deal with the prospect, however remote, that they might be struck by a North Korean atomic weapon," Apps wrote. "At the very least, a North Korea armed with nuclear submarines would hugely complicate the calculus for any U.S. president handling a crisis on the Korean peninsula itself."