Trump brags about nuclear power
• President says US arsenal is stronger than ever after North Korea announces plans for a missile attack on Guam amid rising tension
President Donald Trump followed up his incendiary warning to North Korea with a boast on Wednesday about the strength of the US nuclear arsenal.
President Donald Trump followed up his incendiary warning to North Korea with a boast on Wednesday about the strength of the US nuclear arsenal, although he expressed hope it would not need to be used.
Trump’s Twitter messages about the nuclear arsenal came after North Korea said it was considering plans for a missile strike on the US Pacific territory of Guam. That, in turn, followed Trump’s comments on Tuesday that any North Korean threat to the US would be met with “fire and fury”.
Trump tweeted on Wednesday: “My first order as president was to renovate and modernise our nuclear arsenal.” He said: “It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.
“Hopefully, we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!”
The sharp increase in tension between a country that has one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals and an aspiring nuclear power rattled financial markets and prompted US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to try to play down the rhetoric.
While Trump tweeted that the nuclear arsenal was more powerful than before, US officials say that it takes decades to modernise nuclear weapons, a move already under way under former president Barack Obama, and that there are treaties that regulate nuclear expansion.
Shortly before Trump’s remarks on the nuclear arsenal, Tillerson landed in Guam for a previously scheduled visit after telling reporters he did not believe there was an imminent threat from North Korea.
Tillerson said that with his “fire and fury” warning, the US president was trying to use the kind of language that would resonate with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
North Korea regularly threatens to destroy the US.
“What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un would understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language,” Tillerson said.
Earlier on Wednesday, North Korea said it was “carefully examining” a plan to strike Guam, which is home to about 163,000 people and a US military base. The plan would be put into practice at any moment, once Kim had made a decision, a Korean People’s Army spokesman said in a statement.
Guam governor Eddie Calvo dismissed the threat and said the island was prepared for “any eventuality” with strategically placed defences.
Calvo said he had been in touch with the White House and there was no change in the threat level.
“Guam is American soil .... We are not just a military installation,” Calvo said in an online video message.
North Korea, which is pursuing missile and nuclear weapons programmes in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, also accused the US of devising a “preventive war” and said in another statement that any plans to execute this would be met with an “all-out war, wiping out all the strongholds of enemies, including the US mainland”.