US Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday urged North Korea to freeze its nuclear program as a first step toward starting serious negotiations with the United States and the world about its future.
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Soon after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump offered their prescriptions for a US response. China can help get North Korea back to the negotiating table by working with the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russian Federation on both diplomatic and economic approaches that will help restart negotiations with North Korea.
According to the Japanese account of the call, Obama told Abe that he agreed with this assessment, and he described the U.S. -Japan alliance as “rock solid” and America’s commitment to nuclear deterrence against threats to Japan as “unshakable”. The weapon in the latest nuclear provocation was estimated to have a 10 kiloton yield and was approximately four kilotons more than the one previously used in the nuclear test earlier this year. It was the result of an underground nuclear explosion over the border, the latest test blast by North Korea, coming only eight months from its last test in January. If the United States can not punt the problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons to China it must deal with North Korea directly.
South Korea, in turn, has ratcheted up its own rhetoric, saying it has in place a plan to annihilate Pyongyang if it is attacked – The North Korean capital will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map, it vowed. Following the recent mass defection of North Koreans working at restaurants in foreign countries and the defection of Thae Yong-ho, a senior North Korean diplomat, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is said to have ordered overseas workers back to the country.
The statement came after the USA flew two supersonic B-1B bombers over South Korea on Tuesday in a show of force and warned it would act to defend the peninsula. South Korea has continually expressed concern over North Korea’s nuclear developments and recently called for the U.N.to apply “unbearable pain on the North to leave no choice but to change”. 9, Defense Minister Han Min-koo said, “We believe that they are prepared to carry out a nuclear test in a different tunnel”.
“The whole point of THAAD is to devalue the North Korean missile threat to its neighbors”, Miller added.
The Sept. 9 blast was in defiance of United Nations sanctions that were tightened in March.
There are three primary reasons that support President Obama’s statement that, indeed, the United States will never be able to accept North Korea as a nuclear state.
Pressed by a reporter on what leverage the USA has against China, she said, “we have a lot of leverage”, and pointed to an enhanced missile defense system and USA military deployments in Asia-both of which “China has no interest in”.
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Despite his efforts, North Korea refuses to accept the terms of denuclearization.
