ASIA U.S. to press China to push North Korea

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will warn China’s leaders that the United States is prepared to step up missile defenses and pressure on Chinese financial institutions if they fail to use their influence to restrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, according to several officials involved in planning his first mission to Asia.

China has complained vociferously about the Trump administration’s recent decision to speed up the deployment of the THAAD antimissile system in South Korea, charging that it will undermine regional stability.

But the Trump administration’s message is that the United States has run out of time to respond to North Korea’s military advances, and that the party the Chinese need to complain to is in Pyongyang.

One senior administration official involved in the planning called it “responsible” to increase the defenses of the United States and its allies against growing threats from North Korea. The official acknowledged that doing so would displease Beijing, but noted that China has the option of helping constrain and pressure the North.

The official agreed to discuss the internal deliberations of Tillerson’s trip on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified.

The tough message was shaped in a series of White House meetings before Tillerson’s departure for Japan on Tuesday. It also followed more proposals at both ends of the spectrum — including opening up talks with North Korea and preparing for military action against its key missile and nuclear sites — that were set aside, at least for now.

The result is that Tillerson is essentially adopting variants of the approaches that the Bush and Obama administrations took, though guided by Trump’s declarations that, unlike his predecessors, he will stop the North Korean program from developing a new intercontinental missile.

Against the waves of nuclear and missile tests in the past year, and Pyongyang’s declaration that it is in the “final stages” of preparations for the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the White House recognizes it has little time for debate, the senior administration official said.

This is not the first time that a secretary of state has sought to play the missile defense card. Tillerson’s immediate predecessor in the job, John Kerry, told the Chinese that if China succeeded in constraining Pyongyang’s military ambitions, the United States could limit and perhaps even withdraw some of its antimissile systems in the region.