US has assessed North Korea could be preparing to carry out first weapons test
The US officials are on alert as the US and South Korea conduct scaled-down, simulated military exercises and US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are in Asia for meetings with their Japanese and South Korean counterparts.
A test or provocation of some kind would not be a surprise, regional experts said.
“North Korea traditionally has done some kind of strongly provocative action early in both US and South Korean new administrations,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who pointed to tests conducted in 2017, shortly after former President Donald Trump took office, and in 2009, to mark former President Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House. “The idea was to ‘train them like a dog,’ a North Korean defector told me,” Klingner said, to squeeze concessions from the two, more powerful countries.
“So history would indicate they’d do something in the first few months of a Biden administration as well,” he said. “If they do a provocation, it’s perfectly predictable.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to respond to the comment Tuesday. “We don’t have a direct comment or response to the comments made from North Korea,” Psaki told reporters in a briefing on board Air Force One, en route to Philadelphia with the President. She pointed to the meetings between Blinken, Austin, and their counterparts, where “certainly, the security of the region will be a topic of discussion.”
Later this week, Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan are also headed to Alaska to meet with their Chinese counterparts, which Psaki also said will feature a discussion on “security in the region.”
Blinken and Austin reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearization of North Korea” in Japan on Tuesday and to creating opportunities for further cooperation between the US, Japan, and South Korea, according to a statement from the US State Department.
They will hold meetings in South Korea on Wednesday local time.
One senior US official said North Korea might decide whether to go through with a test after seeing what comes out of Blinken and Austin’s meetings in Asia.
General warns about North Korea’s ‘alarming success’
On Tuesday, a senior US general issued a public warning about the threat posed by North Korea
“The Kim Jong Un regime has achieved alarming success in its quest to demonstrate the capability to threaten the U.S. homeland with nuclear-armed ICBMs, believing such weapons are necessary to deter US military action and ensure his regime’s survival,” Gen. Glen Van Herck, head of US Northern Command and responsible for the defense of the continental United States, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
The possibility of a test in the coming days has led Biden administration officials across several agencies to discuss how they would respond publicly if one happens, the officials said.
The officials…
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