Last Updated Jan 3, 2017 6:31 AM EST
President-elect Donald Trump insists North Korea won’t develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the United States.
Mr. Trump addressed the issue Monday evening on Twitter.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Sunday in his annual New Year’s address that preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) have “reached the final stage.” He didn’t explicitly say a test was imminent.
Mr. 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!”
It was unclear if Mr. Trump meant he would stop North Korea or he was simply doubting Pyongyang’s capabilities. His aides did not immediately respond to questions seeking clarification.
The president-elect then berated North Korea’s most important ally, tweeting, “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!”
A state-run Chinese tabloid says Mr. Trump is “pandering to ‘irresponsible’ attitudes” by accusing Beijing of not stepping in to curtail the North Korean nuclear program.
The Global Times newspaper says that program “stokes the anxieties of some Americans” who blame China rather than looking inward.
The Communist Party-controlled newspaper published its report a few hours after Mr. Trump’s tweet about China.
China is North Korea’s principal ally and economic lifeline. While Beijing has publicly reprimanded Pyongyang after nuclear tests, critics say China hasn’t done enough to tighten economic pressure on North Korea.
Since winning the November election, Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized China. He also spoke to the president of Taiwan , the self-governing island China considers part of its territory.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said Mr. Trump’s comment could be interpreted as a “clear warning” to the North, shows he’s aware of the urgency of the threat posed by Pyongyang’s nuclear program and won’t retreat from a policy of sanctions against North Korea, the Reuters news agency reports.
The Trump tweet was his first mention of the North Korean nuclear issue since the U. S. election in November, Reuters points out.
Views vary, sometimes wildly, on the exact state of the North’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 enable 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.
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.
But armed to the teeth, acutely bellicose and not afraid to push tensions on the Korean Peninsula to the brink, Pyongyang could be among Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy challenges, experts say.

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South Korea said Tuesday that U. S. President-elect Donald Trump had sent a “clear warning” to North Korea over the isolationist nation’s nuclear ambitions, while a Trump aide suggested Pyongyang was being put “on notice” by the incoming administration.
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway backed up South Korea’s assessment of the president-elect, following his tweet that North Korea will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the United States. She added that Trump was “not making policy at the moment. “
Trump’s tweet referred to the annual New Year’s address given by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un , in which he said that his country is in the “final stages” of preparing an intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korea has previously conducted several medium and long-range missile tests, and has been rebuked in the past by U. S. leaders for its nuclear ambitions.
The UN Security Council has passed a series of resolutions, including sanctions, aimed at curtailing North Korea’s nuclear program since the country conducted its first test in 2006.
Conway categorized Trump’s remarks as a warning to North Korea against pursuing such ambitions, which she said “could be deployed to reach Seattle almost immediately,” according to unnamed experts.
“The president of the United States will stand between them and missile capabilities,” Conway said of North Korea.
Conway also sought to clarify other remarks made by Trump over the holiday weekend, in which he expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic party officials.
Trump cautioned against being quick to place judgment on Russia for hacking U. S. emails in a conversation he had with reporters while entering a New Year’s Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Saturday evening.
“I just want them to be sure, because it’s a pretty serious charge,” he said of American intelligence agencies. “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong.”
Trump went on to say that the hacking could have been done by a country or organization other than Russia.
“I also know things that other people don’t know,” he added.
Conway suggested on “GMA” that Trump was referring to briefings he received from top intelligence officials.
“Presidents and president-elects have to know things that you and I don’t know–I hope they do,” Conway said. “He’s privy to intelligence briefings of all sorts. “

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Given President-elect Donald Trump ‘s ukase-like tweets last week, if President George W. Bush has not phoned his successor once removed with a crisp message, he should do so immediately. Six words are enough. “Donald, you are not president yet! ” And, the 43rd president might have added, “And please do a little more homework before sounding off. ”
The intervention of Trump via Twitter and MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski into the most vital and potentially existential national security issues is, at best, unhelpful. These tweets followed the post- election congratulatory phone calls Trump accepted from the Taiwan president and Pakistani prime minister. The first called into question the 45-year-old “one China policy. ” The second provoked India.
More seriously, Trump has called for “greatly strengthening and expanding” our nuclear weapons and boasted about winning a nuclear arms race against Russia; rejected the Obama administration’s abstention of a U. N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for expanding settlements into the occupied territories; and threatened two major defense contractors — Boeing over the cost of the next Air Force One and Lockheed Martin over the huge cost growth of the F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation fighter.
Since Dwight Eisenhower promised to go to Korea to end that war in 1952, no other president-elect has imposed himself so dramatically on the political scene as has Trump. The president-elect has done this with 140 characters rather than press conferences or written op-ed pieces. Serious people worry whether these interventions help or hurt American security, especially when each appears to be an instinctive rather than a well thought-out response. And many fear this style of instant reaction is indicative of what will be a very active presidential bull in a very fragile china shop.
Concerning the need for fuller understanding and knowledge of the issues, consider the tweets about nuclear weapons and the costs of Air Force One and the F-35 Lightning. During the campaign, Trump did not seem to understand what the nuclear triad of land, sea and air deterrent forces was or meant. Nor did he acknowledge that both Russia and America have signed the New START treaty limiting both sides to 1,550 strategic launchers and about 5,000 warheads.
If Trump was reacting to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with his senior military leaders in which Putin vowed to make Russian strategic nuclear capabilities sufficient to defeat the West’s defensive anti-ballistic systems, did he appreciate the argument the Russian president was making? The answer appears to be no.
Regarding Boeing and Air Force One, while the company’s CEO Dennis Muilenberg pledged to keep the cost below $4 billion, that is not his or Boeing’s call. It is the White House that sets Air Force One’s requirements to protect the president from all dangers whether kinetic or electronic that drive costs.
In prompting Boeing for an F-18 Super Hornet alternative to the F-35, did anyone advise the president that such a request had been made before and proved to be unworkable? Or did Trump know that only the Navy and Marines fly the F-18 not the Air Force? And did anyone inform the chief executive-to-be that eight other nations are planning to buy or have bought F-35s so that cuts to the program could be disastrous for this coalition?
But suppose Trump had taken a different tack based on a fuller understanding of these issues. He could have reminded Putin that Ronald Reagan helped bankrupt the Soviet Union with the Strategic Defense Initiative. That tweet might have said: “Vlad, Star Wars broke you last time. Don’t force us to do it again! ”
About Air Force One, a tweet might have read: “$4 billion for AF One is outrageous. We will ensure the price is right. ” And instead of trying to leverage Lockheed Martin’s F-35 costs with an upgraded Super Hornet, the next commander-in-chief could have proposed:
“Unmanned aerial vehicles are smart, effective and can create jobs. Boeing and Lockheed, what can you do about that? ”
Whatever one thinks of the president-elect, the greater challenge is not to make America great again. The challenge is to confront and fix the myriad problems, many irrational and self-imposed by a government in gridlock, that got Trump elected in the first place. Instinct is important provided it is headed in the proper direction. Instinct based on fuller knowledge and understanding is even better.
Perhaps the 43rd and 44th presidents can pass that message to the 45th.
Harlan Ullman is a senior adviser at Washington D. C.’s Atlantic Council and chairman of two private companies. His next book, due out next year, is “Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Wars It Starts,” which argues that failure to know and to understand the circumstances in which force is used guarantees failure.

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(CNN) It looks like a Transformer, moves like a Transformer and with a name like Method-2, it even sounds like a character from the blockbuster franchise.
CNN’s Sandi Sidhu contributed to this report

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