Trump boasts of nuclear arsenal

● Tillerson plays down president’s ‘fire and fury’ threat to Pyongyang, saying: ‘Americans should sleep well at night’

if any, the president had to support his claim about the nuclear force.

A nuclear arsenal modernisation effort started by former president Barack Obama is in the early stages but it is essentially unchanged from the way Mr Trump inherited it in January.

Stephen Schwartz, an independent analyst of nuclear weapons issues, called the boast “patently absurd”.

He wrote on Twitter that “literally nothing has happened in the last 201 days to increase the overall power of the US nuclear arsenal”.

Only hours before Mr Trump’s tweets, his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged calm and said Americans should have “no concerns” despite the exchange of threats between the president and North Korea.

Asheflewhomefromasia,mr Tillerson insisted the developments didn’t suggest the US was moving closer to a military option for dealing with the crisis.

“Americans should sleep well at night,” he said. “Nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours.”

Mr Tillerson also sought to explain the thinking behind Mr Trump’s warning. He said the president was trying to send a strong and clear message to North Korea’s leader so that there wouldn’t be “any miscalculation”.

Mr Tillerson said: “What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.

“I think the president just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime on the United States’ unquestionable ability to defend itself.”

He added the US “will defend itself and its allies”. The comments put Mr Tillerson once again in the role of translating the president’s aggressive rhetoric into more diplomatic terms and of working to minimise the chances of public panic.

In fact, Mr Tillerson argued that North Korea’s escalating threats indicated it was feeling the pressure from a successful US strategy.

Mr Tillerson was speaking as he returned from Malaysia to Washington, stopping in Guam on the way.

Hours earlier, North Korea’s army had said it was exploring plans for attacking the tiny US territory, which houses US military bases and is a common refuelling stop for US government aircraft crossing the Pacific Ocean.

Mr Tillerson said he never considered re-routeing his trip so as to avoid stopping in Guam.

Although he insisted there was no imminent threat, he noted that, even if there were, “the North Korean missile capability can point in many directions, so Guam is not the only place that would be under threat”.

Although it is extremely unlikely that the North would risk annihilation by preemptively attacking American citizens, the escalating rhetoric has raised concern that a miscalculation could spiral out of control and lead to military conflict – a concern especially acute in Guam, according to residents.

At least one prominent politician felt Mr Trump was not bluffing with his threat. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican on the armed services committee, said the president had “basically drawn a red line” by saying Pyongyang can’t ever have a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

“He’s not going to let that happen,” Mr Graham said. “He’s going to stop the threat.”