Trump: Military ready to respond
He hopes N. Korea finds ‘another path’
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump capped a week of charged rhetoric aimed at North Korea on Friday with a more precise threat of force, tweeting “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.”
He added: “Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”
For a second day, Trump followed up his provocative posts on Twitter with more expansive comments to reporters monitoring his working vacation from his New Jersey golf club. He dismissed the potential for back-channel negotiations and reiterated his calls to North Korean leader Kim to halt his threats to the U.S. and its allies.
“If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat,” Trump told reporters, “if he does anything with respect to Guam, or anyplace else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast.”
The ambiguous phrase “overt threat” suggested that the president was trying to set a higher bar for retaliation than he had earlier in the week, when he simply said any threat could trigger action.
Trump’s comments throughout the week — improvised without the review from his national security team that such delicate matters usually get — have alarmed many allies and members of the foreign policy community, who have expressed increasing concern that the president is inflaming a volatile situation with an unpredictable, nuclear-armed foe.
The heightened tension prompted Guam, the U.S. territory in the Pacific that has been the subject of North Korean threats, to post emergency guidelines offering specific advice in the event of a nuclear missile attack.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a stalwart ally who has clashed with Trump repeatedly, said Germany would stand by America in a war but warned that there was no military solution and that fiery talk would be foolish. “I consider an escalation of rhetoric the wrong answer,” she said.
Trump, asked about her comments later, said Merkel speaks for Germany, “perhaps,” not the United States.
China, North Korea’s most important ally, tried to cool the situation. Its stateowned newspaper, Global Times, which often reflects the Chinese government’s official policy, gave notice to North Korea in an editorial that Beijing would remain neutral if Pyongyang attacks first, and told Washington that it would intervene should the United States pre-emptively strike.
“The uncertainty in the Korean Peninsula is growing,” the newspaper wrote. “Beijing is not able to persuade Washington or Pyongyang to back down at this time. It needs to make clear its stance to all sides and make them understand that when their actions jeopardize China’s interests, China will respond with a firm hand.”
Trump has not been deterred by concerns from governments and policy analysts about his rhetoric.
“My critics are only saying it because it’s me,” he said, asserting that tens of millions of Americans are pleased that he is standing up to Kim’s regime and that any other American leader would have been praised by establishment voices for using such forceful language.
During his break in New Jersey, Trump has tweeted often and held impromptu sessions with reporters while spending long stretches outside the public eye. In addition to the “locked and loaded” tweet, Trump also retweeted one from the U.S. Pacific Command with pictures of fighter jets and the statement that “Lancer #bombers on Guam stand ready.”
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Honolulu on Friday on a previously planned visit with leaders of the Pacific Command. Dunford will also meet with foreign leaders during the trip.
Despite Trump’s “locked and loaded” tweet, the Pentagon has not announced any major deployments of troops or movements of ships to the Korean Peninsula. But officials say that the U.S. military stands by its motto to be ready to “Fight Tonight” against North Korean aggression.
U.S. and South Korean forces are preparing for annual air, land and sea exercises later this month, involving 17,500 U.S. service members. The exercises have been scheduled for Aug. 21-31, but elevate the chance of miscalculation.
“If miscalculation occurs, we will then be caught in a crisis without an effective means of direct communication between the two sides,” said Scott Snyder, director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The outcome and consequences of such a crisis could be great and could have long-lasting unpredictable effects on the regional security order.”
Several veterans of the region said Trump is pushing the issue to the brink before he has to, damaging important lines of communication in the meantime given that North Korea’s capacity to deliver long-range nuclear missiles is still not fully established, and could be months or years away.
“It’s not a Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s not something where you have a short urgent need to act,” Anthony Cordesman, a national security veteran who has served in several administrations beginning with President John F. Kennedy’s.