U.S.: ‘All options are on the table’ for North Korea

TOKYO — The Trump administration challenged China to do more to pull its ally North Korea back from the nuclear brink as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson bluntly declared Friday that the United States will do whatever is necessary to prevent a North Korean attack.

“All options are on the table,” Tillerson said in Seoul, where he underscored U.S. commitment to Asian allies threatened by North Korea and said he would lean on China during a visit there today.

In Washington, President Donald Trump goaded China, which has extensive economic and political ties to North Korea but has resisted choking off the flow of money and military materials to its ally.

“North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been ‘playing’ the United States for years,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “China has done little to help!”

China has repeatedly pledged to do more, but the Trump presidency, like the Obama and George W. Bush administrations before it, accuses Beijing of going easy on Pyongyang.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley went further, telling an interviewer Friday that the Trump administration is making a sharp pivot away from what she said was an ineffectual Obama strategy regarding China and North Korea.

“There was a soft approach to China in the past presidency and what I can tell you now is we’re going to go harder on China,” Haley said on Fox News. “We’re going to say, ‘Look, if you really are wanting to partner with this, if you really are wanting to stop the nuclear testing that is going on in North Korea, prove it.’”

“We are going to go through and ask them to push towards sanctions and push towards talks with North Korea,” Haley said.

China says threats of military action by the United States or its allies South Korea and Japan, both within range of existing North Korean missiles, are unhelpful. Beijing favors further efforts to negotiate with North Korea, and hosted the last such international effort, which failed.

North Korea is known for its exaggerated and bellicose rhetoric, but the combination of threats and missile launches, coinciding with Chinese anger at South Korea for deploying an American antimissile battery, has raised tensions in the region to a level seldom seen in recent years.

Tillerson will be the first high-level Trump administration official to go to China, whose leaders were angered by Trump’s frequent bashing of Beijing over trade policies during the presidential campaign and his decision to speak with the elected leader of Taiwan in December.