He conveyed that warning during a recent dialogue that brought Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis into a room with Chinese State Cou…
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warned China that U. S. military action against North Korea is a possibility unless China works with the Trump administration to rein in the regime’s nuclear weapons program, he revealed Wednesday.
He conveyed that warning during a recent dialogue that brought Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis into a room with Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and representatives of the Chinese military. Tillerson was blunt about the stakes of the North Korea crisis, which has been exacerbated in recent decades by Chinese economic support.
“I said, ‘State councillor, if you and I don’t solve this, these guys get to fight,’” Tillerson recalled to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a discussion at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif. “And we don’t want that, and neither do you.”
Such discussions inform Tillerson’s assessment that a rigorous international sanctions campaign could force North Korea to begin major nuclear talks. But he also defended the aggressive military posture that China and Russia criticized as an escalation of the threat in the region.
