TRUMP’S NUCLEAR THREAT TO KOREA
But we can still sleep well at night insists US adviser
DONALD Trump made a thinly veiled threat to strike North Korea yesterday.
The President warned Kim Jong-un that America’s nuclear arsenal was “more powerful than ever” after the dictator threatened to attack Guam.
But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said “Americans should sleep well at night”
as he tried to downplay growing tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
President Trump had tweeted: “My first order as President was to renovate and modernise our nuclear arsenal. 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!”
He spoke out after Pyongyang said it was “carefully examining” plans for a 2,200-mile missile strike on the US Pacific territory.
A Korean People’s Army spokesman said the plan would be put into practice at any moment, once Kim Jong-un made a decision.
Fury
Earlier President Trump said: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Mr Tillerson, who visited Guam yesterday on a long-scheduled tour of the Far East, said later: “I do not believe that there is any imminent threat.
“I think Americans should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days.”
He said President Trump’s “fire and fury” warning was intended to resonate with Kim.
Mr Tillerson said: “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.” In some of the toughest language used by the US in the crisis, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis told North Korea not to provoke “the end of its regime and the destruction of its people”.
General Mattis said North Korea, or officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), would be “grossly outmatched” by the US and lose any war it starts.
In a statement he said: “The DPRK must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.” On Tuesday US B-1B bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons conducted exercises with Japanese fighters near the Korean peninsula. A pilot said: “How we train is how we fight and the more we interface with our allies, the better prepared we are to fight tonight.”
The US Defense Intelligence Agency this week said Pyongyang has developed a miniaturised nuclear weapon that can fit on ballistic missiles. North Korea has carried out five nuclear bomb tests since 2006, including two last year, and last month test-fired two long-range missiles. Guam is home to about 163,000 people and a US military base.
The UN Security Council – including Kim’s only ally, China – last weekend voted for tough new sanctions on North Korea.
Last night US Republican senator John McCain questioned the President’s rhetoric, saying: “You’ve got to be sure you can do what you say you’re going to do.”
White House adviser Sebastian Gorka compared the stand-off to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis between the US and Russia.
YESTERDAY one of President Trump’s advisers compared America’s present stand-off with North Korea to the Cuban missile crisis. To which it might be said that there is good news and bad news. Good news in that the world didn’t end up destroying itself in 1962. Bad news in that Britain and every other country on the planet never got so close to nuclear annihilation.
The comparison doesn’t hold this time for a number of reasons. Not least because America is facing the most unpredictable country on the planet and not the USSR at the height of its arrogance and power.
Nevertheless, these are dangerous times on the Korean peninsula. Anything more than a stand-off between the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and the world’s newest would have a fallout that would affect every country – including Britain.
Since 1953, when the Korean War ended, the people of the north have been kept in a state of permanent misery and alertness. For more than six decades their government has said that the world hates them. On a visit to the country some years ago I was immediately struck not just by the desolation of the population and the total nature of the repression but by the closeness of the Korean War in the national imagination.
BUT this means that the war of words which is taking place between Washington and Pyongyang has deeper and potentially more dangerous repercussions than many people recognise.
For many years North Korea has been attempting to gain nuclear weapons. The regime sees their acquisition as one of their best ways of survival. The country has carried out a number of tests that suggest (the country not being open to outside inspection) that they have managed to acquire a very rudimentary type of nuclear device. But the most complex stage of the process continues to evade them.
That is the development of a “delivery” capability, which means managing to get the nuke on a warhead and successfully sending it to the target. In recent months North Korean has stepped up its efforts on that part of the