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CIA Director Mike Pompeo gives a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative US think tank, on Jan. 23. (by Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent)
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US President also being presented with military options in the event diplomacy fails
“The president is intent on delivering this solution [to the North Korean nuclear issue] through diplomatic means. It is the focus. It has been uniformly that for 365 days. It remains so today,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said during a lecture hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative US think tank, on Jan. 23. “We are equally, at the same time, ensuring that… if we conclude that it [a diplomatic solution] is not possible, that we present the president with a range of options,” Pompeo went on to say. “We’re trying to ensure that all the various options that the president might want to consider are fully informed and we understand what’s really going on and the risks associated with each of those decisions as best we can identify them for him.” This appears to mean that Trump is being presented with military options, along with ample reminders of the corresponding risks. Pompeo attempted to deflect criticism about his remark during an interview with CBS on Jan. 22 about North Korea being just a few months away from acquiring the ability to attack the US even while acknowledging he had said the same thing six months ago. “I want everyone to understand that we are working diligently to make sure that a year from now I can still tell you they are several months away from having that capacity,” he said. “They [North Korea] have moved at a very rapid clip… Their testing capacity has improved, and the frequency that they have tests, which are materially successful, has also improved, putting them ever closer to a place where Americans can be held at risk. I think that’s a true statement,” Pompeo said. “It is also analytically true that Kim Jong Un will not rest with a single successful test, right? The logical next step would be to develop an arsenal of weapons… [and] the capacity to deliver from multiple firings of these missiles simultaneously… [A]nd that’s the very mission set that President Trump has directed the government to figure out a way to make sure it never occurs.” Responding to Pompeo’s comments, US current affairs journal The Atlantic ran an article titled, “Trump’s Red Line on North Korea Gets Fuzzier.” The article explained that Trump’s original plan to stop North Korea from developing even one long-range missile has been watered down to stopping it from launching several missiles at the same time. Pompeo also responded in the affirmative to a question about whether he regards Kim Jong-un as a “rational actor.” But when asked how he thought Kim, as a rational actor, would respond to a limited military strike, Pompeo joked that he was “happy not to answer.” In regard to the purpose of Kim Jong-un’s development of nuclear weapons, Pompeo said, “His conventional forces alone…close to a million under arms, depending on how you count them, is no small thing. And so we do believe that Kim Jong-un, given these tool sets [nuclear weapons and conventional forces] would use them for things besides simply regime protection; that is, to put pressure on what is his ultimate goal, which is reunification of the peninsula under his authority.” White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has openly said on several recent occasions that the objective of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons is bringing the entire peninsula under its control. “That’s not realistic, in light of the significant size of South Korea’s conventional army and the US’s provision of a nuclear deterrent,” said a source at a US think tank. Vice President Pence seeks to counter North Korean “messaging” at the Olympics In related news, a senior official at the White House said on Jan. 23 that one of the reasons why US Vice President Mike Pence would be visiting South Korea as the head of the American delegation to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was to counter North Korean attempts to use the Olympics for propaganda purposes.” Reporters in the White House press pool who were accompanying Pence back from a trip to the Middle East quoted this official as saying that Pence “has grave concerns that Kim will hijack the messaging around the Olympics. The North Koreans have been master manipulators in the past. It’s a murderous state.” The official said that Pence is planning to tell the truth on the world stage, which will be the opposite of what North Korea is doing. By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
