U.S. downplays risk of N. Korea conflict

Trump advisers say clash avoidable

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. national security officials said Sunday that a military confrontation with North Korea is not imminent, but they cautioned that the possibility of war is greater than it was a decade ago.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, tried to provide assurances that a conflict is avoidable, while also supporting Trump’s tough talk. They said the United States and its allies no longer can afford to stand by as North Korea pushes ahead with the development of a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

“We’re not closer to war than a week ago but we are closer to war than we were a decade ago,” McMaster said, adding that the Trump administration is prepared to deal militarily with North Korea if necessary.

But he stressed that the U.S. is pursuing “a very determined diplomatic effort,” led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, that’s coupled with new financial sanctions aiming to dissuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un from further provocations.

“The U.S. military is locked and loaded every day,” McMaster said, repeating one of Trump’s threats from last week.

Pompeo said “there’s nothing imminent today,” in response to a question about how worried people should be over the escalating tensions. He said the U.S. has a “pretty good idea” of North Korea’s intentions, but Pompeo declined to provide specifics. The CIA chief described Kim as “rational” and responsive to “adverse circumstances.”

“The reaction in North Korea that we are intending to get is an understanding that America is no longer going to have the strategic patience that it’s had that has permitted him to continue to develop his weapons program,” Pompeo said. “It’s that straightforward.”

While U.S. intelligence officials are pretty sure North Korea can put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental missile that could reach the United States, experts aren’t convinced the bomb could make it all that way intact.

They cite lingering questions about Kim’s nuclear know-how.

“I don’t think North Korea has a good measure of how accurate the missile is at this point,” said Michael Elleman, an expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “They don’t know if the re-entry technologies will really hold up — whether the bomb will survive the trip.”

North Korea has shortrange missiles that can hit its neighbors. It has tested an intermediate one that could strike Guam, a U.S. territory, as well as a longer-range missile that could reach Hawaii and perhaps the U.S. West Coast. The intermediate and long-range missiles are still being developed, and it’s still questionable whether they can reliably strike targets.

“Putting these things all together and making them work is extremely challenging, and they haven’t yet demonstrated a capability to produce a reliable re-entry vehicle, which is what houses the actual nuclear device,” Joseph Bermudez Jr., an internationally recognized expert on North Korean defense and intelligence affairs and ballistic missile development, said. “Remember, they’ve only tested these systems very few times.”

Still, Bermudez, said, North Korea is “on track” to figure it out.

U.S. officials think it’s just a matter of time before Kim’s program fully matures.

National Intelligence Director Dan Coats told Congress in May that Kim has been photographed beside a nuclear warhead design and missile airframes to show that North Korea has warheads small enough to fit on a missile.

Meanwhile, the top U.S. military officer, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, is traveling in Asia and expected to meet with leaders in South Korea, Japan and China. Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters traveling with him that he aims to “sense what the temperature is in the region.” He also will discuss military options in the event the “diplomatic and economic pressurization campaign” fails.

“We’re all looking to get out of this situation without a war,” Dunford said.

Dunford said last month that it was “unimaginable” to allow North Korea to develop the capability to strike a U.S. city with a nuclear weapon.

The chairman of Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the deputy commander of Republic of Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command and the head of Korea’s national security council will also attend, said an official, who asked not to be identified. Dunford arrived in Seoul on Sunday, the official said.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, made a plea for cool-headedness in a phone conversation with Trump on Friday night, urging both sides to avoid words or actions that could worsen the situation.

The call came after Trump made fresh threats against North Korea on Friday, declaring the U.S. military “locked and loaded” and warning Kim that he “will regret it fast” if he takes any action against U.S. territories or allies.

Trump has pushed China to pressure North Korea to halt a nuclear weapons program that is nearing the capability of targeting the United States. China is the North’s

biggest economic partner and source of aid, but says it alone can’t compel its wayward ally to end its nuclear and missile programs.

China earlier this month agreed to harsh United Nations sanctions against North Korea even while calling on all sides to take a step back and negotiate a solution. Formal talks on North Korea’s nuclear program collapsed in 2009, and Kim has accelerated his efforts to obtain the ability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon.

The White House said that Trump and Xi agreed during their call that North Korea must stop provocative behavior, reiterating their mutual commitment to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons. It also said that Trump looked forward to visiting China later this year, calling the relationship between the two leaders “extremely close.”

The warm words exchanged between Xi and Trump Friday night in the U.S. masked underlying tensions between Beijing and Washington over how to deal with the errant regime in Pyongyang. Trump has often used sharp words to argue that China isn’t doing enough to rein in North Korea, and has threatened punitive measures on trade if Xi fails to act.

State-run China Central Television quoted Xi as telling Trump the “relevant parties must maintain restraint and avoid words and deeds that would exacerbate the tension on the Korean Peninsula.”

But Trump on Friday appeared to set another red line — the mere utterance of threats — that would trigger a U.S. attack against North Korea and “big, big trouble” for Kim.

North Korea’s Minju Joson newspaper said in an editorial Saturday that the North’s army is “capable of fighting any war the U.S. wants.”

The tough talk capped a week in which long-standing tensions between the countries risked abruptly boiling over.

The U.N. sanctions condemning North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear program drew fresh ire and threats from the North. Trump, responding to a report that U.S. intelligence indicates Pyongyang can now put a nuclear warhead on its long-range missiles, vowed to rain down “fire and fury” if challenged.

The North then came out with a threat to lob four intermediate-range “Hwasong-12” missiles near Guam, a tiny U.S. territory some 2,000 miles from the North’s capital, Pyongyang.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., welcomed Trump’s pugnacious approach, arguing that many of the president’s critics failed to stop North Korea from developing a nuclear weapon that could hit the United States.

“President Trump inherited a mess,” Graham said. “All those smart people who are criticizing his rhetoric and his policy, how well did you do?”

Pompeo and Graham spoke on Fox News Sunday, and McMaster appeared on ABC’s This Week.