[Across the region on Wednesday, analysts reacted with concern and even foreboding about the tone of Mr. Trump’s comments, as well as about the unimpeded progress that North Korea appears to be making toward becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, able to strike the United States or other far-off adversaries.]
By
Steven Lee Myers and Choe Sang-Hun
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South
Korean soldiers last week in Panmunjom, a village that straddles the border
with North
Korea. Credit Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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BEIJING
— President Trump’s threat
to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea sent a shudder through Asia on
Wednesday, raising alarm among allies and adversaries and, to some observers,
making the possibility of military conflict over the North’s nuclear program
seem more real.
With North Korea responding that it would, if
attacked, strike American military forces in Guam, analysts warned that the
escalating statements increased the likelihood of war — perhaps one based on
miscalculation, should one side’s fiery rhetoric be misread by the other.
Some played down Mr. Trump’s remark on
Tuesday as simply a warning not to attack the United States, albeit one whose
tone was more typical of North Korean propagandists than it was of past
American presidents. Officials in South Korea and Japan said that while the
situation was tense, it had not reached a crisis point.
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson played
down any imminent threat from North Korea, saying on Wednesday, “I think
Americans should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular
rhetoric of the last few days.”
Still, some in the region said that the
danger of war had not seemed as clear and present in decades. What was
unthinkable just years ago no longer seems so, they said.
“We’re going to see a confrontation between
the United States and North Korea that will be ferocious and strong and
bloody,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations
at Renmin University of China in Beijing. He called Mr. Trump’s language
“explosive,” and said the threat and counterthreat had resulted in a new stage
of confrontation.
Mr. Cheng said that he was also puzzled by
the timing of Mr. Trump’s remark, just days after the United Nations Security
Council imposed the toughest economic penalties yet on North Korea for its
nuclear and missile programs. That unanimous vote, which overcame China’s
historical reluctance to harshly punish its ally, has been widely described as
the Trump administration’s greatest diplomatic accomplishment so far.
“Usually, the U.S. government is willing to
give more time for a resolution, to see how the resolutions bite,” Mr. Cheng
said.
Across the region on Wednesday, analysts
reacted with concern and even foreboding about the tone of Mr. Trump’s
comments, as well as about the unimpeded progress that North Korea appears to
be making toward becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, able to strike the
United States or other far-off adversaries.
While Mr. Trump’s warning that North Korea,
if it kept threatening the United States, would “be met with fire and fury like
the world has never seen” clearly reflected growing American frustration over
the North’s advances, analysts said it was not clear that he had fully
considered the implications of such strong language.
That, they said, raised questions about the
administration’s strategy, and about whether Mr. Trump recognized the price
that some of America’s staunchest allies, especially Japan and South Korea,
could pay for carrying out his threat.
“Trump doesn’t seem to understand what an
alliance is, and doesn’t seem to consider his ally when he says those things,”
said Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation
in Seoul, the South Korean capital. “No American president has mentioned a
military option so easily, so offhandedly as he has. He unnerves people in
South Korea, few of whom want war in Korea.”
Mr. Trump’s warning followed a report that
American intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has made a nuclear
weapon that can fit on the tip of a ballistic missile. Such drastic advances
have already led Japan and South Korea to consider deploying new, more powerful
weapons to counter the threat, after decades of relying on American military
might for strategic security.
Itsunori Onodera, Japan’s new defense
minister, said on Wednesday that Japan found it credible that North Korea had
succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead, or that it would do so in the
near future.
“At the very least, whether they have them
now or will have them soon, it’s reached a level where we have to monitor
vigilantly,” he said.
Officials in Asia and beyond have grown used
to provocative musings by Mr. Trump, particularly on Twitter, and they tend to
ignore them or to treat them as inaccurate reflections of American policy. But
analysts saw his “fire and fury” remark as dangerous and unlikely to deter
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
“We are used to painting North Korea as
‘unpredictable,’ but increasingly it is the U.S. that is introducing strategic
unpredictability into a volatile dynamic,” Euan Graham, an analyst at the Lowy
Institute in Sydney, Australia, wrote in an email.
He added that Mr. Trump’s warning would not
have its desired effect because “the North Koreans have an ear for bluster.”
Mr. Cheng of Renmin University said that
North Korea’s defiance in response to the Security Council’s latest sanctions
indicated that it had no intention of slowing its program. He said that nations
across the region, including his own, needed to start preparing for the
consequences of a conflict.
“We are in a very dangerous time, and China
is going to need to take notice and prepare for the worst,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry, responding to an
inquiry Wednesday about Mr. Trump’s threat, restated its position that the
North Korean nuclear issue should be resolved by political means and that “all
relevant parties” should avoid “remarks and acts that may escalate the
conflict.”
The South Korean government sought on
Wednesday to ease concern about the situation, saying that the North’s recent
posturing, including its threat to attack Guam, appeared to be aimed at
tightening solidarity among its own population and causing its neighbors
anxiety.
“The situation has become more serious on the
Korean Peninsula,” a senior official at the presidential Blue House told South
Korean reporters, speaking in a briefing on the condition of anonymity. “But we
don’t think it has reached a crisis stage yet.”