As U. S. President Donald Trump grapples with domestic crises and transition issues, the country that is widely seen as representing his largest foreign policy challenge is gearing up some 10,000 km away to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of striking the United States.
North Korea, for all its bluster and bombast, is likely to present Trump with his first real test as Pyongyang seeks to gauge how the new president will approach the hermit nation’s progressing nuclear and missile programs. An ICBM launch, or another type of weapons test, is expected to come sooner rather than later, with some experts saying the Pyongyang is likely to prod Washington and Seoul in the next few months.
Reports last month said that North Korea had apparently built two missiles presumed to be ICBMs and placed them on mobile launchers for test-firing in the near future. It appeared to have intentionally leaked this news to send a “strategic message” to Trump just ahead of his inauguration, media reports said.
“I’m a little surprised there hasn’t already been some kind of provocation,” Steven Ward, who teaches political science at South Korea’s Chosun University, said of Pyongyang. “I doubt they are going to let him collect his bearings for long. They are going to want to know how Trump reacts to being pushed.”
But if he is pushed, little remains clear about how he will respond.
In conversations involving both President Barack Obama and Trump and his transition team, media reports characterized the outgoing administration as voicing a sense of urgency on North Korea, labeling it the top national security threat facing the U. S.
Beyond this, Trump has also used social media to express his anger at the North. When its leader, Kim Jong Un, proclaimed in January that the country was in the “final stage of preparation for the test launch” of an ICBM, Trump lashed out on Twitter, writing that it “won’t happen” — though he has not given specifics of how he would prevent this.
Last week he dispatched defense chief James Mattis to South Korea and Japan, a move widely seen as seeking to reassure the anxious U. S. allies of the new administration’s commitment to the region amid the North’s saber-rattling — and Trump’s own criticisms of the alliances.
Mattis said Friday that any use of nuclear weapons by the North on the United States or its allies would be met with what he called an “effective and overwhelming” response.
The pointed remarks by Mattis likely signal a shift from the Obama administration, which oversaw a policy of “strategic patience” in which Washington attempted to wait out a sanctions-crippled and recalcitrant Pyongyang.
That policy, observers say, has largely failed to halt the North’s progress on its nuclear and missile programs.
