President Donald Trump said Tuesday that "all options are on the table"
in terms of a U.S. response to North Korea's launch of a missile over
Japan.
| President Donald Trump |
In a terse, written statement Tuesday, Trump said that with the missile launch North Korea
has "signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the
United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international
behavior."
"Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean
regime's isolation in the region and among all nations of the world,"
Trump said. "All options are on the table."
Trump later told reporters, "We'll see, we'll see" when asked what he
would do about North Korea. Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania
Trump, was departing the White House for a trip to survey storm damage
in southeast Texas.
In a first, North Korea on Tuesday fired a midrange ballistic missile
designed to carry a nuclear payload that flew over U.S. ally Japan and
splashed into the northern Pacific Ocean, officials said. The aggressive
launch over the territory of a close U.S. ally sent a clear message of
defiance as Washington and South Korea conduct war games nearby.
Trump's statement implies that military action remains an option in
resolving the standoff over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons
that could threaten America. But a U.S. military strike against North
Korea is considered highly unlikely. Even Trump's own strategic adviser,
Steve Bannon, dismissed the threat as a bluff shortly before he was
dismissed earlier this month.
North Korea has the world's largest standing army and a massive
conventional weapons arsenal that can easily target the South Korean
capital of Seoul and its metropolitan area of about 25 million people.
While Democrat and Republican presidents have routinely offered the "all
options on the table" formulation, U.S. officials have long assessed
that the North would likely respond to any U.S. strike by attacking its
neighbor or nearby Japan. The result could be a war with the risk of
mass casualties on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of Americans in
Northeast Asia, military and civilians, would be endangered.
In recent weeks the administration has been emphasizing it wants to use
economic and diplomatic pressure to achieve a negotiated solution.
Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan conferred by telephone over the latest missile test.
The White House said the leaders agreed that North Korea poses "a grave
and growing direct threat" to the United States, Japan, South Korea and
countries around the world.
"President Trump and Prime Minister Abe committed to increasing pressure
on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international
community to do the same," the White House said.
Abe said in a statement that "Japan's and the U.S. positions are totally at one."
The prime minister added that both nations were in "total agreement" that an emergency meeting was needed at the U.N. Security Council
to step up pressure on North Korea after what he called an
unprecedented threat. He also said Trump expressed his "strong
commitment" to defending Japan.
North Korea's latest test came weeks after the U.N. Security Council
voted unanimously to impose tough new sanctions against the government
in Pyongyang.
It also followed a series of missile launches late Friday, and came
after a period in which the U.S. and North Korea had traded heated
rhetoric over Pyongyang's continued missile tests, which violate U.N.
Security Council resolutions prohibiting them.
Trump last week praised North Korea's decision to back down from its earlier threats to attack the U.S. territory of Guan.
"But, Kim Jong Un, I respect the fact that I believe he is starting to
respect us," Trump said at a campaign rally last week in Phoenix. "I
respect that fact very much. Respect that fact. And maybe, probably not,
but maybe something positive can come about."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had also complimented North Korea for its restraint in recent weeks.
SOURCE:ABCNews Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington and Bradley Klapper contributed from Washington.
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