The threat of war
Fears of an impending nuclear conflict rose dramatically last week as North Korea and the US traded threats of military action. Pyongyang warned it would respond to any show of US aggression with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, while US Vice-president Mike Pence, on a visit to the region, said that “all options are on the table”, and that Washington would respond to any attack with “overwhelming force”. To reinforce its warning, the US sent a nuclear-armed carrier fleet towards the Korean Peninsula. But North Korea staged its own show of strength, displaying a range of ballistic missiles in a parade of military hardware in Pyongyang.
As tensions rose, President Kim Jong Un again defied UN resolutions by staging a ballistic missile test. The missile appeared to explode on launch, possibly as a result of a US cyberattack, but Pyongyang insisted it would continue to conduct tests on a “weekly, monthly and yearly basis”.
What the editorials said
It’s “terrifying”, said the Daily Mail. The world is facing its “darkest and most dangerous” moment since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Yet Donald Trump is adding fuel to fire by cranking up the rhetoric: he badly needs “a crash course in diplomacy, calmness and common sense”. Trump is playing with fire, said The Independent. The man who pledged to pursue non-interventionist policies has overnight become a “trigger-happy” president ready to fight on three fronts simultaneously: in Afghanistan ( see page 20), against Isis in Syria, and now, perhaps, in North Korea. The only good news is that he has dropped his threat of economic warfare against Beijing: maybe China will now be ready to use its leverage with North Korea to avert catastrophe.
Beijing is in a quandary, said The Times. It can’t allow Kim’s regime to collapse, because that would trigger a vast flood of refugees into China and, likely as not, the emergence of a Us-friendly united Korea. Yet it might be tempted by a grand bargain: a trade deal with the US in return for tougher measures against Pyongyang. It’s the best hope we have.