[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.]
By David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon
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A Japanese soldier
guarding a PAC-3 surface-to-air missile launcher in Tokyo
this month. Credit
Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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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 needs 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Tillerson is essentially adopting variants of the approaches
that the Bush and Obama administrations took, though guided by Mr. 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. Mr. 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.
“The
president of the United States deployed some additional missile defense
capacity precisely because of the threat of North Korea,” Mr. Kerry said after
an April 2013 visit to Beijing. “And it is logical that if the threat of North
Korea disappears because the peninsula denuclearizes, then obviously that
threat no longer mandates that kind of posture.”
But
there is no evidence that China, perhaps fearing instability on the Korean
Peninsula, ever applied the sort of pressure that would have prompted North
Korea to shelve its military programs.
It
is not clear how explicitly Mr. Tillerson, a diplomatic novice with no past
experience in proliferation issues, will deliver the message to the Chinese at
a moment that he will also be trying to set up the first meeting between
President Trump and President Xi Jinping, at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida
early next month.
During
the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he was willing to sit down with North
Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and negotiate with him directly, perhaps over a
hamburger. Since then, Mr. Trump has taken an increasingly hard line, and
suggested that he would link China’s use of its influence over the North to
other issues, including trade relations.
Last
week, the Chinese repeated a proposal they knew the United States would reject,
calling for a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in return
for a cessation of American and South Korean annual military exercises, which
are just now beginning. The Trump administration immediately rejected that
call, saying that it would reward the North if it complied with United Nations
resolutions it had long ignored, and would make the United States’ defense
arrangements with South Korea a subject of bargaining.
Reinforcing
military ties, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, conducted a 30-minute phone call on Tuesday with his South Korean
counterpart, Gen. Lee Sun-jin. A Pentagon statement said the generals discussed
the possibility that North Korea could carry out “provocative actions” during
the joint American and South Korean exercises now underway, or in April when
North Korean authorities commemorate the birthday of Kim Il-sung, the founder
and first leader of the country.
The
New York Times reported earlier this month that in addition to bolstering
traditional missile defenses, former President Barack Obama had ordered
stepped-up cyber and electronic warfare attacks on the North’s
intermediate-range missiles. In some of the tests, those missiles have had a
remarkably high failure rate, though it is impossible to say how much those
problems are rooted in American sabotage. More recently, however, North Korea
has achieved some notable advances, including the test of a solid fueled
intermediate-range missile and the recent launch of four medium range missiles
into the Sea of Japan.
During
the administration’s deliberations, there has also been discussion of putting
more pressure on Chinese banks, perhaps through “secondary sanctions,” that
would make it difficult for any bank that did business with North Korea to also
deal in American dollars. The technique worked effectively against Iran before
it reached a nuclear agreement in the summer of 2015.
But
Daniel Glaser, a former Treasury official who constructed many of the
sanctions, and now a partner in the Financial Integrity Network, said in an
interview that the largest Chinese banks often shun dealings with North Korea
and that some of the smaller ones have little exposure to the American banking
system.
“It’s
not easy to execute,” he said. “The North Koreans have hidden these
relationships, and directed them, with care.”
