Kim Jong-un has claimed that the secretive state of North Korea is close to testing ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.
President-Elect Trump responded on Twitter since he (quite reasonably) doesn’t trust the MSM to report accurately, with “It won’t happen.”
North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017
Well, that’s a little ambiguous.
But what does Trump actually mean by that?
- It won’t happen because North Korea isn’t that far along with its nuclear program?
OR –
- It won’t happen because President-Elect Trump is planning some kind of action to prevent things going that far?
If North Korea is indeed moving along with their nuclear program, Intel could be hard to come by. It’s not like it’s a country where we have an embassy and people on the ground who can feed us concrete information.
Preventative measures could be outright military action against Kim Jong-un, or it could be the targeting of the scientists working on the program.
The US has THADD missiles in South Korea:
THADD stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, and the deployment of the system would counter missile and nuclear attacks from North Korea.
China is concerned that the radar system used in THADD will be able to track movements of its troops and artillery. They regard it as a remote control spy that will feed back information about its military capabilities. North Korea had also threatened a ‘physical response’ against the decision to base the system in South Korea:
North Korea has also spoken out against its deployment, threatening to nuke its neighbor and the US base in Guam, in protest at the South’s decision to deploy THAAD anti-missile systems. (source)
There’s also the possibility that Trump will sit down and have a chat with the nutty little dictator. Last June, he made an off-the-cuff comment that he’d be willing to host Jong-un in the United States, much to the outrage of the media. (Of course, I could stop adding the phrase “much to the outrage” because someone is always outraged regarding Trump.) His response to the criticism? “What the hell is wrong with speaking?” (source)
Is trouble with Asia on the horizon?
Reuters is reporting that South Korea regards Trump’s words as a “clear warning” to the North. The South Korean foreign ministry said:
“Because of our active outreach, President-Elect Trump and U.S. officials are clearly aware of the gravity and urgency of the North Korean nuclear threat,” ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told a briefing.
“They are maintaining an unwavering stance on the need for sanctions on North Korea and for close cooperation between South Korea and the U.S.”.
On Monday, again on Twitter, Trump struck out at China for not exerting more control over North Korea:
China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017
Is trouble coming our way from the East? Only time will tell.
“It won’t happen” because the North Koreans don’t want to die.
They can build all the missiles they want to, but anyone with the power to launch one wouldn’t be stupid enough to do so.
South k……. A decent stage for WW 3