US plans for dismantling North Korea nukes may face resistance
The United States has a plan that would lead to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year, President Donald Trump‘s national security adviser said, although U.S. intelligence reported signs that Pyongyang doesn’t intend to fully give up its arsenal. John Bolton said top U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to cooperate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow. The State Department said the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Sung Kim, who led policy negotiations with North Korea before the summit, traveled to the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas on Sunday to resume talks on next steps on implementing the joint declaration Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed in Singapore. In that summit declaration, the North committed “to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The short joint statement did not define how that would be achieved or say when the process would begin or how long it might take. “Our goal remains the final, fully verified denuclearization of the DPRK, as agreed to by Chairman Kim in Singapore,” the department said Monday. DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Bolton’s remarks Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” presented a very ambitious timeline for North Korea to fulfill that commitment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters three weeks ago that the U.S. wants North Korea to take “major” nuclear disarmament steps within the next two years — before the end of Trump’s first term in January 2021. Despite Trump’s rosy post-summit declaration that the North no longer poses a nuclear threat, Washington and Pyongyang have yet to negotiate the terms under which it would relinquish the weapons that it developed over decades to deter the U.S. Doubts over North Korea’s intentions have deepened amid reports that it is continuing to produce fissile material for weapons. The Washington Post on Saturday cited unnamed U.S. intelligence officials as concluding that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile. Evidence collected since the June 12 summit in Singapore points to preparations to deceive the U.S. about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea’s arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, according to the report. It said the findings support a new, previously undisclosed Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize. Some aspects of the new intelligence were reported on Friday by NBC News. A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the Post’s report was accurate and that the assessment reflected the consistent view across U.S. government agencies for the past several weeks. The official was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and requested anonymity. Bolton on Sunday declined to comment on intelligence matters. He said the administration was well-aware of North Korea’s track record over the decades in dragging out negotiations with the U.S. to continue weapons development. “We have developed a program. I’m sure that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be discussing this with the North Koreans in the near future about really how to dismantle all of their WMD and ballistic missile programs in a year,” Bolton said. “If they have the strategic decision already made to do that, and they’re cooperative, we can move very quickly,” he added. He said the one-year program the U.S. is proposing would cover all the North’s chemical and biological weapons, nuclear programs and ballistic missiles. Even if North Korea is willing to cooperate, dismantling its secretive weapons of mass destruction programs, believed to encompass dozens of sites, will be tough. Stanford University academics, including nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker, a leading expert on the North’s nuclear program, have proposed a 10-year roadmap for that task; others say it could take less time. Pompeo has already visited Pyongyang twice since April to meet with Kim — the first time when he was still director of the CIA — and there are discussions about a possible third trip to North Korea late next week but such a visit has not yet been confirmed. Trump reiterated in an interview broadcast Sunday that he thinks Kim is serious about denuclearization. “I made a deal with him. I shook hands with him. I really believe he means it,” the president said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.” Trump defended his decision to suspend “war games” with close ally South Korea — a significant concession to North Korea, which so far has suspended nuclear and missile tests and destroyed tunnels at its nuclear test site but not taken further concrete steps to denuclearize. “Now we’re saving a lot of money,” Trump said of the cancellation of large-scale military drills that involve flights of U.S. bombers from the Pacific U.S. territory of Guam. Pressure will now be on Pompeo to make progress in negotiations with North Korea to turn the summit declaration into concrete action. He spoke with the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea in recent days about the situation with the North, according to the State Department, which has declined to comment on any upcoming travel. Pompeo postponed plans to meet with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and their counterparts from India on July 6, citing unavoidable circumstances, which has fueled speculation he will make a third trip to Pyongyang. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
Kim Jong Un could give up ICBMs but keep some nuclear forces
After years of effort to develop nuclear missiles that can target the U.S. mainland, is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un really ready to pack them away in a deal with President Donald Trump? Perhaps, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean Pyongyang is abandoning its nuclear ambitions entirely. Tuesday’s meeting in Singapore between Kim and Trump comes after a sharp turn in North Korea’s diplomacy, from rebuffing proposals for dialogue last year to embracing and even initiating them this year. The change may reflect a new thinking about its nuclear deterrence strategy — and how best to secure the ultimate goal of protecting Kim’s rule. A look at how Kim’s appetite for talks swung amid the North’s ups and downs in weapons development and what that says about how he might approach his negotiations with Trump: ___ TESTS AND TALKS North Korea’s attitude toward dialogue in the past two years has seemed to shift with setbacks or progress in its weapons tests. Even after starting a rapid process of weapons development following a nuclear test in January 2016, Pyongyang constantly invited rivals to talks that year. It proposed military meetings with Seoul to reduce tensions and indicated it could suspend its nuclear and missile tests if the U.S.-South Korean military drills were dialed back. Washington and Seoul demurred, saying Pyongyang first must show genuine intent to denuclearize. At the time, North Korea’s quest for a credible nuclear deterrent against the U.S. was troubled. The military conducted eight tests of its “Musudan” intermediate-range missile in 2016, but only one of those launches was seen as successful. The country’s path toward an intercontinental-range ballistic missile appeared cut off. North Korea’s stance on dialogue changed dramatically, though, following the successful test of a new rocket engine in March 2017, which the country hailed as a significant breakthrough. The engine, believed to be a variant of the Russian-designed RD-250, powered a successful May flight of a new intermediate-range missile, the Hwasong-12, reopening the path to an ICBM. That was followed in July by two successful tests of an ICBM, the Hwasong-14. Pyongyang’s demands for talks disappeared. Proposals to meet from a new liberal government in Seoul were ignored. Determined to test its weapons in operational conditions, the North flew two Hwasong-12s over Japan and threatened to fire them toward Guam, a U.S. military hub. The North’s state media brought up President Richard Nixon’s outreach to Beijing in the 1970s following a Chinese test of a thermonuclear bomb, saying it was likewise inevitable that Washington will accept North Korea as a nuclear power and take steps to normalize ties. Kim talked of reaching a military “equilibrium” with the U.S. By all signs, he was fully committed to completing an ICBM program he intended to keep. ___ THE DETERRENCE GAME Kim’s turn toward diplomacy this year suggests he may have concluded the nuclear deterrence strategy was failing, some analysts say. After a November test of a larger ICBM, the Hwasong-15, Kim proclaimed his nuclear force as complete, but his announcement may have been more politically motivated than an assessment of capability. Although the Hwasong-15 displayed a greater range than the Hwasong-14, there was no clear sign the North had made meaningful progress in the technology needed to ensure that a warhead would survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry. New U.S. National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy reports released in December and January respectively also seemed to reduce the credibility of Kim’s deterrence plans, said Hwang Ildo, a professor at Seoul’s Korea National Diplomatic Academy. In the documents, the U.S. assesses it could sufficiently defend against the small number of North Korean ICBMs — believed to be about 10 or fewer — with its 44 ground-based interceptors deployed in Alaska. Missiles fired from North Korea would have to pass Alaska to reach the U.S. mainland. Experts are divided on whether the interceptors, which Washington plans to deploy in larger numbers soon, can be counted on to destroy incoming warheads. However, Hwang said, real capability doesn’t matter as much as Trump believing that the system works, which reduces the bargaining power of the ICBMs. Kim can’t be the Mao Zedong to Trump’s Nixon if the U.S. sees his weapons as containable. With North Korea’s limited resources, as well as the threat of a pre-emptive U.S. attack, it’s difficult for the North to mass produce enough ICBMs to overwhelm the interceptors in Alaska. Rather than prolonging his nation’s economic suffering, Kim may have concluded it would be better to deal away his ICBMs at the cusp of operational capability, especially when it was no longer clear the missiles would guarantee his survival. “North Korea always tries to maintain flexibility and increase its options from step to step,” Hwang said. ___ A PAKISTANI MODEL? What never changes for North Korea is that the survival of the Kim regime comes first. Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University, said Kim is probably modeling a nuclear future after Pakistan, which began building a nuclear arsenal in the 1990s to deter India. Pakistan is now estimated to have more than 100 warheads that are deliverable by short- and medium-range weapons and aircraft. Kim may be seeking a deal where he gives up his ICBMs but keeps his shorter-range arsenal, which may satisfy Trump but drive a wedge between Washington and its Asian allies, Seoul and Tokyo. In drills with shorter-range weapons in 2016, the North demonstrated the potential to carry out nuclear attacks on South Korean ports and U.S. military facilities in Japan. In negotiations, Kim may try to exclude submarine technologies from a freeze or verification process to leave open a path toward sub-launched ballistic missile systems, Hwang said. Then, if diplomacy fails and Kim goes back to building nuclear weapons, the systems would expand their reach and provide a second-strike capability to retaliate if North Korea’s land-based launch sites are destroyed. North Korea successfully tested a submarine-launched missile that flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in
Detainees freed in North Korea, returning to US with Mike Pompeo
Three Americans detained in North Korea for more than a year are on their way back to the U.S. with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in the latest sign of improving relations between the two longtime adversary nations. Trump said on Twitter that Pompeo was “in the air” and was with “the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting.” The president, who had been hinting about an imminent release, said he would greet them at Andrews Air Force Base at 2 a.m. Thursday. The release of the detainees came as Pompeo visited North Korea on Wednesday to finalize plans for a historic summit between Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump said on Twitter that there had been a “good meeting with Kim Jong Un,” adding: “Date & Place set.” North Korea had accused Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song and Tony Kim, all Korean-Americans, of anti-state activities but their arrests were widely seen as politically motivated and had compounded the dire state of relations over the isolated nation’s nuclear weapons. The family of Tony Kim thanked “all those” who worked for his return and also credited Trump for engaging directly with North Korea. “Mostly we thank God for Tony’s safe return,” the family said in a statement, and they urged people to “continue to pray for the people of North Korea and for the release of all who are still being held.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that Trump viewed the release “as a positive gesture of goodwill.” The release capped a dramatic day of diplomacy in Pyongyang for Pompeo. After his 90-minute meeting with Kim Jong Un, he gave reporters a fingers-crossed sign when asked about the prisoners as he returned to his hotel. But it was only after a North Korean emissary arrived a bit later to inform him that the release was confirmed. The three had been held for periods ranging between one and two years. They were the latest in a series of Americans who have been detained by North Korea in recent years for seemingly small offenses and typically freed when senior U.S. officials or statesmen personally visited to bail them out. The last American to be released before this, college student Otto Warmbier, died in June 2017, days after he was repatriated to the U.S. with severe brain damage. Warmbier was arrested by North Korean authorities in January 2016. He was accused of stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor. His parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, accusing the government of torturing and killing their son. Of the newly released detainees, Kim Dong Chul, a South Korean-born U.S. citizen, had been held the longest. The former Virginia resident was sentenced in April 2016 to 10 years in prison with hard labor after being convicted of espionage. He reportedly ran a trade and hotel service company in Rason, a special economic zone on North Korea’s border with Russia. The other two detainees hadn’t been tried. Kim Hak Song worked in agricultural development at an experimental farm run by the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, or PUST. The university is the only privately funded college in North Korea and was founded in 2010 with donations from Christian groups. He was detained last May for alleged anti-state activities. Tony Kim, who also uses the name Kim Sang-duk, was detained in April 2017 at the Pyongyang airport. He taught accounting at PUST. He was accused of committing unspecified criminal acts intended to overthrow the government. Pompeo, in his visit, discussed the agenda for a potential Trump-Kim Jong Un summit in his meeting with Kim Yong Chol, the vice chairman of the central committee of North Korea’s ruling party. The two sides plan to meet once again to finalize details. No specifics were offered although officials said Singapore is emerging as the most likely venue. The unprecedented meeting has been slated for this month or early June. Kim Yong Chol noted improved relations between North and South Korea and pushed back against the idea that U.S. pressure led to the likely summit. “This is not a result of sanctions that have been imposed from outside,” he said. That contradicted Trump, who has said repeatedly that his pressure tactics brought North Korea to the negotiating table. Pompeo’s trip, his second to North Korea this year, had not been publicly disclosed when he flew out of Washington late Monday aboard an Air Force jetliner. Trump announced the mission Tuesday afternoon as he laid out his case for withdrawing from a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, another bitter U.S. adversary. Accompanying Pompeo were a few senior aides, a security detail and two journalists — one from The Associated Press and one from The Washington Post. Pompeo, who first traveled to North Korea as CIA chief in early April, is only the second sitting secretary of state to visit the reclusive nation with which the U.S. is still technically at war. The first was Madeleine Albright, who went in 2000 as part of an unsuccessful bid to arrange a meeting between then-President Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il. A Trump-Kim meeting seemed a remote possibility just a few months ago when the two leaders were trading threats and insults over North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests. But momentum for diplomacy built this year as North and South Korea moved to ease tensions, including the North sending a contingent to the Winter Olympics in the South. The Koreas’ leaders’ held their own summit last month. In March, Trump unexpectedly accepted an offer of talks from Kim after the North Korean dictator agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests and discuss “denuclearization.” According to South Korea, Kim says he’s willing to give up his nukes if the United States commits to a formal end to the Korean War and pledges
Beyond bluster, U.S., N. Korea in regular contact
Beyond the bluster, the Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, addressing Americans imprisoned in the communist country and deteriorating relations between the longtime foes, The Associated Press has learned. It had been known the two sides had discussions to secure the June release of an American university student. But it wasn’t known until now that the contacts have continued, or that they have broached matters other than U.S. detainees. People familiar with the contacts say the interactions have done nothing thus far to quell tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile advances, which are now fueling fears of military confrontation. But they say the behind-the-scenes discussions could still be a foundation for more serious negotiation, including on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, should President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put aside the bellicose rhetoric of recent days and endorse a dialogue. Trump refused to discuss the diplomatic contacts. “We don’t want to talk about progress, we don’t want to talk about back channels,” Trump told reporters Friday. The diplomatic contacts are occurring regularly between Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s U.N. mission, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the process. They weren’t authorized to discuss the confidential exchanges and spoke on condition of anonymity. Officials call it the “New York channel.” Yun is the only U.S. diplomat in contact with any North Korean counterpart. The communications largely serve as a way to exchange messages, allowing Washington and Pyongyang to relay information. Drowned out by the furor over Trump’s warning to North Korea of “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has expressed a willingness to entertain negotiations. His condition: Pyongyang stopping tests of missiles that can now potentially reach the U.S. mainland. Tillerson has even hinted at an ongoing back channel. “We have other means of communication open to them, to certainly hear from them if they have a desire to want to talk,” he said at an Asian security meeting in the Philippines this week. The interactions could point to a level of pragmatism in the Trump administration’s approach to the North Korean threat, despite the president’s dire warnings. On Friday, he tweeted: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.” But on Thursday, he said, “we’ll always consider negotiations,” even if they haven’t worked in the last quarter-century. The contacts suggest Pyongyang, too, may be open to a negotiation even as it talks of launching missiles near the U.S. territory of Guam. The North regularly threatens nuclear strikes on the United States and its allies. The State Department and the White House declined to comment on Yun’s diplomacy. A diplomat at North Korea’s U.N. mission only confirmed use of diplomatic channel up to the release of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier two months ago. Trump, in some ways, has been more flexible in his approach to North Korea than President Barack Obama. While variations of the New York channel have been used on-and-off for years by past administrations, there were no discussions over the last seven months of Obama’s presidency after Pyongyang broke them off in anger over U.S. sanctions imposed on its leader, Kim. Obama made little effort to reopen lines of communication. The contacts quickly restarted after Trump’s inauguration, other people familiar with the discussions say. “Contrary to the public vitriol of the moment, the North Koreans were willing to reopen the New York channel following the election of President Trump and his administration signaled an openness to engage and ‘talk about talks,’” said Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, a U.S.-based group that promotes U.S.-North Korean engagement. “However, the massive trust deficit in Pyongyang and in Washington toward each other has impeded the confidence-building process necessary to have constructive dialogue,” he said. The early U.S. focus was on securing the release of several Americans held in North Korea. They included Warmbier, who was imprisoned for stealing a propaganda poster and only allowed to return to the U.S. in June — in an unconscious state. He died days later. Yun traveled on the widely publicized mission to Pyongyang to bring Warmbier home. Despite outrage in the U.S. with Warmbier’s treatment and sharp condemnation by Trump, the U.S.-North Korean interactions in New York continued. Yun and his counterpart have discussed the other Americans still being held. They include Kim Hak Song, a university employee detained in May accused of unspecified “hostile” acts; Tony Kim, a teacher at the same school, accused of trying to overthrow the government; and Kim Dong Chul, sentenced last year to a decade in prison with hard labor for supposed espionage. But the American and North Korean diplomats also have discussed the overall U.S.-North Korean relationship. The two countries have no diplomatic ties and are still enemies, having only reached an armistice — not a peace treaty — to end the 1950-1953 Korean War. Twenty-eight thousand U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea. In its own convoluted way, North Korea has indicated openness to talks in recent weeks, even as it has accelerated the tempo of weapons tests. On July 4, after the North test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially strike the continental U.S., leader Kim added a new caveat to his refusal to negotiate over its nukes or missiles. Instead of a blanket rejection, he ruled out such concessions “unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated.” That message has been repeated by other North Korean officials, without greater specification. Nor have they offered an indication as to whether Pyongyang would accept denuclearization as the goal of talks. Still, advocates for diplomacy, including some voices in the U.S. government, view the addendum as a potential opening. “North Korea is assessing its options,”
John Kerry: ‘More forceful ways’ may be needed with North Korea
Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday the U.S. may need “more forceful ways” of dealing with North Korea if it develops an intercontinental ballistic missile that threatens America. Speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy, Kerry said nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea’s “reckless dictator” Kim Jong Un pose one of the most serious national security challenges to the United States. Kerry urged Donald Trump‘s incoming administration to work closely with China, Pyongyang’s main trading partner, to exert more economic pressure on North Korea. He said the aim should be resuming talks on denuclearization that could open the way to economic assistance for North Korea, sanctions relief and a formal peace on the divided Korean Peninsula. But Kerry said if the North persists in developing the long-range missile it “drags the United States into an immediate threat situation to which we may then have to find other ways, more forceful ways of having an impact on the choices that he is making.” Kerry didn’t elaborate. Kim announced in his annual New Year’s address that the country had reached the “final stages” of intercontinental ballistic missile development. Trump responded with a tweet, saying “It won’t happen!” but did not indicate how his administration would prevent it. Over the past eight years, the Obama administration has cranked up sanctions on Pyongyang, invested more in missile defense and staged occasional shows of military force. But its policies have failed to stall North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. The North conducted two underground nuclear explosions and more than two dozen missile test launches last year. Republish with permission of The Associated Press.
Donald Trump claim on N. Korean nukes may underestimate program
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter to vow that North Korea won’t develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the United States. But it might already have done so. Views vary, sometimes wildly, on the exact state of North Korea’s closely guarded nuclear and missile programs, but after five atomic test explosions and a rising number of ballistic missile test launches, some experts believe North Korea can arm short- and mid-range missiles with atomic warheads. That would allow Pyongyang to threaten U.S. forces stationed in Asia and add teeth to its threat last year to use nuclear weapons to “sweep Guam, the base of provocations, from the surface of the earth.” Guam is a strategically important U.S. territory in the Pacific. Some experts see the U.S. mainland as potentially within reach in as little as five years if North Korea’s nuclear progress isn’t stopped. Trump’s tweet on Monday night U.S. time was in response to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who said Sunday in his annual New Year’s address that preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile have “reached the final stage.” He did not explicitly say a test was imminent. Trump tweeted, “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!” The morning after the tweet, top aide Kellyanne Conway said that while Trump was putting North Korea “on notice,” he was “not making policy at the moment.” Conway, who will serve as Trump’s White House counselor, said that as president, Trump “will stand between (North Korea) and missile capabilities.” North Korea, poor, suspicious of outsiders and governed by a third-generation dictator, is used to being underestimated and mocked. Few believed it could build a nuclear program that would keep U.S. presidents since the early 1990s up at night. Armed to the teeth, acutely bellicose and not afraid to push tensions on the Korean Peninsula to the brink, Pyongyang could be among Trump’s top foreign policy challenges. Here’s a look at how close North Korea may already be to proving Trump’s tweet wrong: — THE NUKES There’s a general consensus that Pyongyang has made significant nuclear and missile progress under Kim, who took over after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in late 2011. Kim has conducted three of the country’s five total nuclear tests, including two last year. Propaganda out of Pyongyang makes clear that North Korea views nuclear weapons as essential to keeping at bay U.S. and South Korean forces it says are intent on its destruction. Some U.S. experts believe North Korea may have enough fuel for about 20 bombs and can add a possible half dozen more each year. Fuel is one thing; it’s much more difficult to develop the technology needed to build bombs small enough to fit on missile tips. Each new nuclear test, however, pushes the North another big step toward its goal of an arsenal of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. — THE MISSILES Outsiders don’t know for sure whether North Korea can arm any of its ballistic missiles, regardless of range, with nuclear warheads yet. But Siegfried Hecker, a leading North Korea nuclear expert, wrote after last year’s September nuclear test that outsiders should now assume that Pyongyang has “designed and demonstrated” atomic warheads that can be placed on short- and possibly medium-range missiles. North Korea may deploy a “working, nuclear-tipped ballistic missile” by 2020, according to another expert, Euan Graham, director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute. North Korea has an arsenal of short-range Scuds and mid-range Rodong missiles, and some South Korean experts believe those can already be armed with nukes. That would put in danger the roughly 28,000 U.S. forces in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan. While there’s not a consensus, some South Korean experts also believe the North can place a nuclear warhead on the more powerful mid-range Musudan missile, which could target Guam, about 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) away. Last year, after a string of failures, North Korea launched a Musudan missile that some experts considered a success. Kim Jong Un has already conducted more ballistic missile tests, including from submarines, in his short time in power than his father did during his entire 18-year reign, Graham wrote last year. This has allowed “refinements” in solid propellants, road mobility and experiments with vertical launches to high altitudes that could complicate U.S. and Japanese missile defense systems’ efforts to intercept, Graham wrote. — PUTTING IT TOGETHER Even if North Korea can fit a nuclear weapon on a missile, it has yet to meet the even greater challenge of building a nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. Since 2012, North Korea has conducted three satellite launches using long-range rockets, in what outsiders consider covers for banned tests of ICBM technology. As with the nuclear detonations, each new rocket test puts the North closer to having a nuclear missile that can target the U.S. mainland. Hecker estimates that it may take North Korea five to 10 years to succeed. — CHINA’S ROLE Another tweet from Trump criticized China, North Korea’s most important ally, for not doing more to discourage its nuclear weapons program: “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!” While Beijing has publicly reprimanded Pyongyang after nuclear tests and has agreed to rounds of U.N. sanctions against the North, critics say China hasn’t done enough to tighten economic pressure. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China’s efforts and commitment to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear program are “consistent and clear.” “The effort China has made to this end is obvious to all,” Geng said in a regular briefing. “We hope all sides can refrain from speaking or doing anything that can aggravate the situation and work in concert to pull the issue back to dialogue and
