Press. voanews.com
U.S. Defense
Secretary James Mattis, echoing the warnings of President Donald Trump, said North
Korea can expect a "massive military response" if it threatens the
United States, the U.S. territory of Guam or America's allies.
Mattis, Trump
and the president's top advisers met at the White House Sunday about North
Korea's announced hydrogen bomb test. The Pentagon chief came out to talk with
reporters briefly afterwards to say the U.S. is not looking for the "total
annihilation" North Korea, but "we have many options to do so."
North Korea’s
repeated provocative ballistic missile tests and now a sixth nuclear test –
this one perhaps the first time it has successfully detonated a thermonuclear
device – have presented Trump with this most critical geopolitical crisis of
his young administration.
“Secretary Mattis expressed the only viable
option in his statement, which is a firm and clear deterrent policy toward
North Korea,” said Hoover Institution Fellow Michael Auslin. However, Auslin
told VOA, the goal of North Korea's denuclearization, which Mattis also
repeated Sunday, unrealizable.
“Continuing to
insist on denuclearization means further rounds of negotiations, and the past
quarter-century has shown that negotiations do not work,” he says. “The Trump
administration has the opportunity to chart a new, more realistic course for
U.S. policy, but not if it adopts the failed policies and goals of previous
administrations.”
Other analysts
and officials reacting to the extraordinarily stark remark from the Pentagon
chief are hoping for diplomatic discussions instead of more tough military
talk. Mattis’ "imprecision was
counterproductive. Will there be a massive military response against any
'threat'? This word choice was a blunder along the lines of the promise of
'fire and fury' against any North Korean threats,” said Frank Aum, a visiting
scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute.
Aum, the former
senior adviser for North Korea at the Defense Department, told VOA: "It’s
telling that the defense secretary was the one who was addressing the press. We
need to get away from a military-centric approach to the North Korea problem
set and reinvigorate diplomacy.”
The president,
leaving a church service near the White House earlier Sunday, said only, “We’ll
see” when a reporter asked if he was planning to order an attack on North
Korea.
"We will
work with our allies. We will work with China," Mnuchin told a television
interviewer (Fox News) Sunday. "But people need to cut off North Korea
economically. This is unacceptable behavior." The North claimed its test
of a hydrogen bomb small enough to be carried by an intercontinental ballistic
missile was a "perfect success."
One U.S.
intelligence official says there is no reason to doubt North Korea's claim that
the nuclear device it detonated underground Sunday was 10 times more powerful
than its fifth nuclear test a year ago. "We’re highly confident this was a
test of an advanced nuclear device – and what we’ve seen so far is not
inconsistent with North Korea’s claims," the intelligence official said.
The blast shook
buildings across the border in China and Russia.
In earlier
Twitter remarks, Trump called North Korea "a rogue nation" whose
"words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United
States." The U.S. leader said North Korea "has become a great threat
and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little
success."
But Trump also
rebuked U.S. ally South Korea, saying Seoul "is finding, as I have told
them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only
understand one thing!" Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke
by telephone Sunday – their fourth conversation since Tuesday, when North Korea
launched a ballistic missile high over Japan.
North Korea
test-fired two ICBMs in July that were believed to have a range long enough to
reach the mainland United States. Pyongyang says its missile development is a
defensive effort to protect itself from U.S. attack.
Pyongyang and
Washington have carried out a war of increasingly bellicose threats in recent
weeks, with North Korea at one point saying it was planning to launch one or
more test missiles toward the U.S. territory of Guam - evidently intending not
to strike Guam, but to aim its rocket to splash down just outside territorial
waters. Trump responded then that if Pyongyang attacked the United States or
its allies, he would respond with "fire and fury like the world has never
seen."
North Korea
declared its hydrogen-bomb test was a "perfect success" in a special
broadcast Sunday afternoon, Asia time. The blast produced an earthquake that
was detected in the Punggye-ri region, where North Korea’s nuclear test
facility is located. Another tremor a few minutes later was believed to be due
to the collapse of a tunnel used for the detonation, which would not be unusual
following a test of this magnitude.
The United
States and Japan, and perhaps other countries, dispatched planes to take air
samples in the region to determine whether any radiation from North Korea could
be detected. The United Nations Security Council has called for an emergency
meeting Monday morning on the situation on the Korean peninsula.
United Nations
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the nuclear test as
"profoundly destabilizing for regional security." National Security
Correspondent Jeff Seldin, Brian Padden in Seoul contributed to this report
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