Pyongyang won’t intimidate U.S., defense chief says
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — He inspected a mockup nuclear warhead, but there was no Kim Jong Un lookalike posing for photographs. He chatted with nuclear missile launch officers in their underground command post, but there was no talk of unleashing nuclear hell on North Korea.
A subtle, unspoken message of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ visit to this nuclear weapons base Wednesday was that America is a mature nuclear power not intimidated by threats from an upstart North Korean leader who flaunts his emerging nuclear muscle.
Mattis was quietly reminding North Korea that it has no match for a U.S. nuclear arsenal that, while old, is still capable of sudden and swift destruction if Kim were to throw the first nuclear punch.
In his only public comments, Mattis cast his visit as part of an effort to ensure that the U.S. maintains the kind of nuclear firepower that convinces any potential nuclear opponent that attacking would be suicidal.
“You can leave no doubt at all,” he told reporters traveling with him. “Don’t try it. It won’t work. You can’t take us out.”
Mattis was taking such a restrained approach that he barred reporters from his town hall-style exchange with airmen on this base that hosts nuclear-capable B-52 bombers as well as the 91st Missile Wing, which has nearly 150 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles standing ready for launch at a moment’s notice.
On Thursday, Mattis was getting classified briefings at Strategic Command, just outside of Omaha, Neb. Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the head of Strategic Command, would be in command of nuclear forces in the event President Trump ordered them into combat.
Mattis said his visits to Minot and Strategic Command are intended to inform his “nuclear posture review,” a top-to-bottom reassessment of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. He said the review is nearly complete but he would not cite a target date. A major question posed in the review is how big the U.S. nuclear force needs to be to remain a deterrent to nuclear war.
Mattis said Wednesday he has become convinced that the U.S. must keep all three parts of its nuclear force, rather than eliminate one, as he once suggested. In congressional testimony in 2015, while he was a private citizen, Mattis said eliminating the ground-based component — intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs — would “reduce the false alarm danger.” He was referring to the argument made by some nuclear policy experts that because ICBMs are postured to be launched on warning of incoming missiles, a false warning might trigger nuclear war.
Mattis has called the submarine-based component “sacrosanct” and has said it is necessary to retain the ability to fire nuclear weapons from planes. Together, those three prongs constitute what the military calls its nuclear triad.