U.S. military is ready to deal with North Korea if necessary: officer
The top U.S. military officer said Monday that the United States wants to peacefully resolve a deepening standoff with North Korea but is also ready to use the “full range” of its military capabilities in case of provocation.
The comments by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford in a series of meetings with senior South Korean military and political officials and the local media appeared to be an attempt to ease anxiety over titfor-tat threats between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea while also showing a willingness to back up Trump’s warnings if need be.
Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting South Korea, Japan and China after a week in which Trump declared the U.S. military “locked and loaded” and said he was ready to unleash “fire and fury” if North Korea continued to threaten the United States.
North Korea, meanwhile, has threatened to lob four intermediate-range missiles into the waters near Guam, a tiny U.S. territory about 3,200 kilometres from Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. This would be a deeply provocative act from the U.S. perspective, and there has been widespread debate about whether Washington would try to shoot the missiles down if they’re fired.
The U.s.-north Korea impasse, which has simmered since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has grown more tense in recent months over worries that the North’s nuclear weapons program is nearing the ability to target the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles last month.
“We are seeking a peaceful resolution to the crisis,” Dunford, who also met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said to reporters, according to a local pool report.
He earlier told his South Korean counterparts that America is ready “to use the full range of military capabilities to defend our allies and the U.S. homeland,” according to U.S. military spokesman Capt. Darryn James.
Moon separately called Monday for a peaceful solution to the nuclear standoff, saying that “there must not be another war on the Korean Peninsula,” according to his office.
In a meeting with top aides at the presidential Blue House, Moon said South Korea would work to safeguard peace on the peninsula in co-operation with the United States and other countries. Moon said North Korea must stop issuing menacing statements and provoking.
North Korea, which is angry over new United Nations sanctions condemning its rapidly developing nuclear and missile program, continued its tough stance on Monday.
The North accused the United States of mobilizing a huge number of weapons and troops for annual military drills with South Korea that begin later this month. Pyongyang, which claims the drills are war preparation, says it will be ready to send its Guam missile launch plan to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval just before or as the drills begin.
“What matters is that if a second conflict (on the peninsula) erupts, that cannot help but lead to a nuclear war,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary. “We are closely monitoring every move by the United States.”