NEW YORK — The Trump administration escalated its rhetoric against North Korea on Sunday, warning that time is running out for a peaceful solution between Kim Jong Un’s regime and the United States and its allies.
Administration officials said the risk from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is rising, and they underscored that President Trump will confront the looming crisis at the U.N. General Assembly this week. Trump, who spoke by phone with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Saturday, referred to Kim on Twitter as “Rocket Man” and asserted that “long gas lines” are forming in the North because of recent U.N. sanctions on oil imports.
[In a tweet, Trump sticks North Korea’s Kim Jong Un with a nickname: ‘Rocket Man’]
Though Trump’s top aides emphasized that the administration is examining all diplomatic measures to rein in Pyongyang, they made clear that military options remain on the table.
“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “None of us want that. None of us want war. But we also have to look at the fact that you are dealing with someone [in Kim] who is being reckless, irresponsible and is continuing to give threats not only to the United States, but to all of its allies. So something is going to have to be done.”
This undated picture released from North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on Sept. 16, 2017, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspecting a launching drill of the medium-and-long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 at an undisclosed location. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)The question remains, however, how realistic the Trump administration’s threats are as the North quickly advances its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Trump’s latest tweets came two weeks after North Korea tested a nuclear device that experts said measured at 250 kilotons, 17 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II.
[North Korea tested another nuke. How big was it?]
Trump warned Kim last month that the North would feel the “fire and fury” of the United States if the regime continued its threats and destabilized the Korean Peninsula and East Asia. But Kim promptly responded with new threats and a round of new weapons tests.
Trump is scheduled to join Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a working lunch Thursday in New York, on the sidelines of the U.N. meetings, to discuss North Korea, White House aides said. Yet Trump will not have the opportunity to meet with Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia; both leaders are skipping the annual gathering.
Last week, Haley touted the U.N. sanctions on the North, saying that, if enacted, they would cut off 30 percent of oil imports and curtail 90 percent of Kim’s exports, putting a major economic pinch on a government that has long struggled to provide for the nation’s estimated 25 million people.
Yet Trump said last week that he and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are skeptical that the sanctions will have a significant impact on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Administration officials reaffirmed the United States’ long-standing policy that the North must agree to relinquish its nuclear arsenal as a prerequisite for direct diplomatic talks.
“He’s going to have to give up his nuclear weapons, because the president has said that he is not going to tolerate this regime threatening the United States and our citizens with a nuclear weapon,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster said on ABC’s “This Week.”