Trump warns North Korea it could face ‘fire and fury’

President ramps up rhetoric as showdown over nuclear weapons program intensifies

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangers the United States, as tensions with the isolated and impoverished nuclear-armed state escalate into perhaps the most serious foreign policy challenge yet in his administration.

In chilling language that evoked the horror of a nuclear exchange, Trump sought to deter North Korea from any actions that would put Americans at risk. But it was not clear what specifically would cross his line.

Administration officials have said that a preemptive military strike, while a last resort, is among the options they have made available to the president.

“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,” Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, where he is spending much of the month on a working vacation.

Referring to North Korea’s volatile leader, Kim Jong Un, Trump said, “he has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said, they will be met with fire and fury, and

“North Korea … will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Undaunted, North Korea warned several hours later that it was considering a strike that would create “an enveloping fire” around Guam, the Western Pacific island where the United States operates a key Air Force base. In recent months, U.S. strategic bombers from Guam’s Anderson Air Force base have flown over Korea in a show of force.

“Will only the U.S. have option called ‘preventive war’ as is claimed by it?” the Strategic Force of the North’s Korean People’s Army, or KPA, said in a statement. “It is a daydream for the U.S. to think that its mainland is an invulnerable Heavenly kingdom.”

“The U.S. should clearly face up to the fact that the ballistic rockets of the Strategic Force of the KPA are now on constant standby, facing the Pacific Ocean and pay deep attention to their azimuth angle for launch,” the statement said.

Bluff or real threat?

Trump’s stark comments went well beyond the firm but measured language typically preferred by U.S. presidents in confronting North Korea, and indeed seemed almost to echo the bellicose words used by Kim. Whether it was mainly bluff or an authentic expression of intent, it instantly scrambled the diplomatic equation in one of the world’s most perilous regions.

Supporters suggested Trump was trying to get Kim’s attention in a way that the North Korean would understand, while critics expressed concern that he could stumble into a war with devastating consequences.

“This is a more dangerous moment than faced by Trump’s predecessors,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit group in Washington. “The normal nuanced diplomatic rhetoric coming out of Washington hasn’t worked in persuading the Kim regime of American resolve. This language underscores that the most powerful country in the world has its own escalatory and retaliatory options.”

Warhead may be ready

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said it would be counterproductive.

“President Trump is not helping the situation with his bombastic comments,” she said in a statement.

Sen. John McCain, RAriz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also took exception.

“All it’s going to do is bring us closer to some kind of serious confrontation,” he told KTAR News radio.

North Korea has accelerated its progress toward a working nuclear-tipped missile force since Trump took office vowing never to allow that to happen. Just last month, the North successfully tested for the first time an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the continental United States.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that North Korea has miniaturized a warhead that could fit on top of one of its missiles. The Japanese government also said in an annual threat assessment Tuesday that “it is possible that North Korea has already achieved the miniaturization of nuclear weapons and has acquired nuclear warheads.”

But experts said the main issue challenging North Korea is not miniaturization; the bombs are already judged small enough to fit on a ballistic missile, as a famous picture of Kim with a warhead seemed to make clear. The real test is whether a warhead can survive the intense heat of re-entry as it plunges through the atmosphere from space, a hurdle North Korea is not believed to have overcome.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a new sanctions resolution against North Korea over the weekend, the eighth since the country conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Backers of the resolution said the new sanctions would cut North Korea’s meager annual export revenue by about a third, impeding its ability to raise cash for its weapons programs.

The sanctions ban the import of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood from North Korea. They also prohibit U.N. member nations from hosting any additional workers from the North above their current levels. Washington called the restrictions “the most stringent set of sanctions on any country in a generation.”

But strong doubts remain over how rigorously China and Russia, the North’s two neighboring allies, will enforce the sanctions.

Even before Trump’s comments, North Korea’s militant response to the sanctions on Tuesday was the strongest indication yet that it could conduct another nuclear or missile test, as it had often done in response to past United Nations sanctions.

“Packs of wolves are coming in attack to strangle a nation,” the North Korean statement said. “They should be mindful that the DPRK’s strategic steps accompanied by physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength,” it added, using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Trump’s “fire and fury” response echoed the kind of language the North Koreans themselves have used in the past. In the last few years, North Korean officials and the government news agency have repeatedly warned the United States and South Korea against any pre-emptive attack, with “sea of fire” a favorite phrase.

China a possible target

At one point, North Korea vowed that “everything will be reduced to ashes and flames the moment the first attack is unleashed”; at another, it vowed to “turn Washington, the stronghold of American imperialists and the nest of evil, and its followers, into a sea of fire.”

While Trump’s statement was among the most militant a president has made about North Korea, it may have been aimed as much at Beijing as Pyongyang. By discussing military options, the administration may be attempting to persuade China and its president, Xi Jinping, that the status quo is dangerous because it risks war.

“It may be a message to Xi Jinping, that you have to be doing more than just sanctions at the U.N.,” said Joseph Nye, a Harvard University scholar who once ran the U.S. government’s National Intelligence Council.

“It may be a very rational, thought-out message,” rather than an emotional outburst.

While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has kept the door open for talks with North Korea, other administration officials have said Trump is being presented with options for war.

But South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday warned against military action.

“Above all, President Moon emphasized that South Korea can never accept a war erupting again on the Korean Peninsula,” his office said in a statement describing a phone call with Trump. “He stressed that the North Korean nuclear issue must be resolved in a peaceful, diplomatic manner through a close coordination between South Korea and the United States.”