U.S. ‘locked and loaded,’ Trump warns N. Korea
President ratchets up the rhetoric, telling Kim Jong Un he ‘will regret’ his threats to America and its allies
BEDMINSTER, N.J.— U.S. President Donald Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “will regret it fast” if he continues his threats to U.S. territories and allies, in another warning that the U.S. is willing to act swiftly against the nuclear-armed nation.
In remarks to reporters, Trump issued the threat directly at Kim, who is also known for his bellicose rhetoric, and all but drew a red line that would trigger swift U.S. action.
“If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat — which by the way he has been uttering for years and his family has been uttering for years — or he does any- thing with respect to Guam or anyplace else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast,” Trump said.
The words followed an early morning tweet in which Trump declared the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” if North Korea acts “unwisely.”
The compounding threats came in a week in which the tensions between the U.S. and the isolated nation seemed to abruptly boil over. North Korea threat- ened to launch an attack on the U.S. territory of Guam, while Trump vowed to deliver “fire and fury” if threatened.
Tough talk aside, there was scant sign the U.S. military was preparing for imminent action and an important, quiet diplomatic channel remained open. The Associated Press reported Friday that talks between North Koreans and a U.S. official continue through a back channel.
WASHINGTON— It was not a big surprise, but it was a big deal — so much so that North Korea issued commemorative stamps. Two successful missile launches in July almost certainly proved the country had produced an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of striking the United States. And according to U.S. intelligence analysts, the country also has nuclear warheads small enough to fit on them.
Non-proliferation experts had long assumed that the secretive country’s nuclear capability was further along than many people wanted to believe, but seeing the proof was still jarring, particularly because the successful tests came less than a month apart.
North Korea has launched 14 missile tests in 2017 and 10 were successful, according to a database maintained by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. A test in May and the two in July represented giant leaps forward in technology.
The missile tested in May was an intermediate-range projectile that on a more horizontal trajectory could probably reach Guam, according to physicist David Wright, codirector of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program. On Aug. 8 and 9, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to attack Guam, a key U.S. air and naval site, after U.S. President Donald Trump warned of “fire and fury” if North Korea made more threats.
The missiles tested in July were the ones the world had been dreading: two-stage Hwasong-14 ICBMs that appeared quite capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. A two-stage rocket has a second fuel supply that takes over when the first burns out, allowing it to fly farther than a singlestage rocket.
Wright calculated that, depending on fuel, the weight of a warhead and the rotation of Earth, the first ICBM would have been able to reach Alaska. Much of the continental United States would be in range of the second one, he said, including New York and Boston. Washington, D.C., probably would be just outside it.
(Toronto, along with virtually all of Canada, is well within Wright’s range estimate. Other experts have offered more conservative estimates that put Toronto at the edge of the second ICBMs’ potential capabilities. A direct route to targets on the U.S. East Coast crosses central Canada.)
Kim’s goal has always been to create a credible, long-range nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland to deter the United States from obliterating his regime. His propaganda is not subtle. For instance, during an April concert celebrating North Korea’s founding father and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the country unveiled a video that showed its missiles blowing up San Francisco.
Other clues indicate that high-priority targets could be strategic military sites rather than population centres.
A 2013 photo accompanying a media report threatening the United States showed Kim with military officers in what looks like a situation room, surrounded by several maps and lists of U.S. installations.
One of those maps clearly showed four lines originating from somewhere in Asia. One ended at Honolulu, home to U.S. Pacific Command and the USS Cheyenne submarine, which can launch long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles. The second ended in Southern California, probably San Diego, the Pacific Fleet’s home port. A third went to Washington. The end point of the fourth line is obscured by an officer’s hat, but analysts suspect it could be Barksdale, La., home to Air Force Global Strike Command, which conducts long-range bomber missions.
The recent successful missile tests do not prove that North Korea has a flawless system, said Catherine Dill, senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. Normally, two tests of an ICBM would not be enough to deploy it, she said. And no one outside North Korea knows whether Kim has a viable re-entry vehicle that could deliver a warhead to a target.
Dill said grainy video of the July 28 test may show the missile burning up on re-entry into the atmosphere, although she said that could have been because it went so much higher than a normal trajectory in the first place.
But these successful tests do change the political conversation about how to deal with North Korea.
“They have reached these very technical milestones, so it’s not like we can stop them from reaching those milestones now,” Dill said. “It’s a lot more tangible now.”