Donald Trump has vowed to respond to North Korea with “fire and fury” if it makes any more threats to attack the United States.

Trump’s comments came after Pyongyang threatened “physical” retaliation for new United Nations sanctions – and on a day when fresh evidence emerged that the North Koreans have overcome one of the last major technical obstacles to being able to hit the US or western Europe with nuclear-armed missiles.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump told journalists at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “They will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen.”

Experts on North Korea have warned that aggressive rhetoric could backfire on Trump, convincing Kim Jong-un that his regime is in imminent jeopardy and triggering what he sees as a pre-emptive attack.

“It is dangerous and reckless and counterproductive for Donald Trump to threaten the annihilation of North Korea,” said Daryl Kimball, the head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. “What we need is a dialogue to reduce tension and avoid catastrophic miscalculation. We are currently on the road to a conflict and we have to get to the off-ramp.”

“I don’t know what he’s saying and I’ve long ago given up trying to interpret what he says,” Republican senator John McCain told an Arizona radio station. “That kind of rhetoric, I’m not sure how it helps.”

The North Korean regime quickly responded, matching Trump’s bellicosity by saying it was “carefully examining” a plan for a missile strike on the US Pacific territory of Guam. In a separate statement, a military official was quoted as saying Pyongyang could carry out a pre-emptive operation if the US showed signs of “provocation”.

US intelligence agencies now believe, it was reported on Tuesday, the Pyongyang regime has succeeded in building a nuclear weapon small enough to put on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – a conclusion supported by a Japanese government study. The US assessment also estimated the North Korean nuclear arsenal has now reached as much as 60 warheads, substantially more than earlier assessments.

After two ICBM tests in July, some weapons experts also believe the North Koreans have passed another hurdle, building a re-entry vehicle (RV) that can deliver a nuclear warhead through the Earth’s atmosphere so that it explodes on its target.

“I don’t have the slightest doubt that the RVs on these missiles are working,” said Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation programme at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “That’s done. We’re there. North Korea can put a nuclear weapon on New York City.”

Other experts are more guarded about the North Korean capabilities, based on the July tests, stressing for example that it is unclear whether the guidance and control issues have been resolved.

As the missiles were tested with much steeper trajectories than would be used in an attack, and because the weight of a warhead is hard to predict, it is hard to estimate the potential maximum range of the weapons. But there is general agreement that if Pyongyang is not already a full nuclear-weapons power, it is advancing rapidly towards that goal.

Before taking office, Trump vowed that North Korea would not develop an ICBM during his presidency. Now that it has happened, the Trump administration has sent mixed messages over how it would respond.

It won a diplomatic victory on Saturday when the UN security council approved a new sanctions package, but the impact of the measures will depend heavily on how far China is willing to go to enforce them.

While the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has said the US has no interest in pursuing regime change, national security advisor HR McMaster has said that the administration is weighing all options, including a “preventative war”.

Lewis argued it was already too late for that.

“The pre- in preventative means ‘before’,” he said. “If you start the preventative war after they have the nuclear ICBM’s, it’s just a regular old nuclear war.”

The US assessment that North Korea has mastered the miniaturization of nuclear warheads was revealed in an internal Defence Intelligence Agency report dated 28 July, according to the Washington Post, which was the first to report on its existence. The report was subsequently confirmed by NBC News.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment stated, in an excerpt that was read to The Washington Post.

In its defence white paper, Japan’s government also said Pyongyang’s weapons programme had reached a “new phase”.

“It is conceivable that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme has already considerably advanced and it is possible that North Korea has already achieved the miniaturisation of nuclear weapons into warheads and has acquired nuclear warheads,” the Japanese defence ministry document said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a missile test launch ... ‘We are currently on the road to a conflict and we have to get to the off-ramp.’ Photograph: Kcna Kcna/Reuters
The significant advances in North Korean weapon capability coupled with the unprecedented rhetoric from a US president represent a particularly dangerous mix, analysts and former officials said.

Jon Wolfsthal, Barack Obama’s special assistant on arms control and nonproliferation said: “I can only imagine how a North Korean leader, after hearing Trump, will interpret something like a stray missile, or a clash between ships. In the past we were trying to tamp down the tensions. Trump is now adding fuel to the fire.”

Jim Walsh, a senior research associate in security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: “The danger all along has not been that chairman Kim was going to sit up one morning in his bed and say I am going to attack the US or I’m going to launch a war against South Korea. The danger has always been that we would get war on the peninsula through miscalculation, misperception – small things that grow large and end up as wars even when people don’t want a war.”

So far neither the US or Japanese governments have confirmed whether North Korea has built a successful re-entry vehicle, and there is disagreement among experts over whether the two recent ICBM tests, on 4 and 28 July, prove.

Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said that a flash picked up by Japanese weather cameras suggests that the re-entry vehicle broke apart when it entered the atmosphere.

“These are being called successful tests, but we don’t know how successful they were. We don’t know if it broke up or not, and we don’t know about the accuracy of the system,” Elleman said.

Lewis believes the flash occurred far above the densest layer of the atmosphere and could have been caused by a reflection.

“There is nothing in that video that I can’t see in a successful re-entry test done by the Russians,” he said. He said the streaks observed coming from the missile, were “a normal thing to see with a re-entry vehicle.”

Julian Borger in Washington and Justin McCurry in Tokyo

* The Guardian. Wednesday 9 August 2017 00.04 BST First published on Tuesday 8 August 2017 20.59 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/08/donald-trump-north-korea-missile-threats-fire-fury

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North Korea may have ability for miniaturised nuclear warhead, Japan says

Defence paper said it was possible that the regime was able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead to load it on to a missile.

Japan has warned that the threat from North Korean nuclear weapons has reached a “new stage” now that it appears to have developed an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

In its defence white paper, Japan’s government said Pyongyang’s weapons programme had “advanced considerably,” adding that it was possible that the regime had acquired the ability to miniaturise nuclear warheads.

“North Korea’s development of ballistic missiles and its nuclear programme are becoming increasingly real and imminent problems for the Asia-Pacific region including Japan, as well as the rest of the world,” said the report, which ran to more than 500 pages.

Japan’s defence ministry said that security threats had reached a new stage after the North conducted two nuclear tests and more than 20 ballistic missile launches last year.

The report went on to speculate that North Korea had improved its technological expertise to the point where it could theoretically marry a nuclear warhead with a missile.

“It is conceivable that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme has already considerably advanced and it is possible that North Korea has already achieved the miniaturisation of nuclear weapons into warheads and has acquired nuclear warheads,” the ministry said.

Some experts believe the North has already miniaturised its nuclear capability, while others believe the regime is still several years away from being able to do so. The Japanese defence ministry report was vague.

Scott LaFoy, a Washington-based imagery analyst focusing on ballistic missile and space technologies, said the report reflected “an increasing belief that North Korea either has or is very close to having a nuclear warhead”.

Based on data and projections by experts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, LaFoy told the Guardian: “I lean towards believing North Korea is either in possession of a device, or the potential sixth nuclear test will be the practical test of said device.

“The Japanese defence white paper doesn’t add much to this due to its expected government vagueness, but it is consistent with what I’m seeing.”

There is growing concern in Japan over the increasing frequency of North Korean missile tests since Kim Jong-un became leader in late 2011.

“North Korea’s missiles represent a deepening threat. That, along with China’s continued threatening behaviour in the East China Sea and South China Sea, is a major concern for Japan,” the country’s defence minister, Itsunori Onodera, told reporters in Tokyo.

Japan has held several evacuation drills in recent months in preparation for a North Korean missile attack, while Onodera is among those who have called for the country to acquire the ability to strike North Korean bases if it is attacked.

That would require a drastic change in Japan’s defence posture to allow it to use offensive weapons, such as bombers and cruise missiles capable of striking targets overseas – a move that would inevitably prompt a debate on whether the country was honouring the defensive posture required by its “pacifist” constitution.

Onodera said this year: “To properly defend Japan we have to be able to attack the bases from where North Korean missiles are launched. This is to prevent a second or third attack. These are not pre-emptive strikes, but counterattacks that fall within the scope of self-defence.”

Although North Korea’s goal has always been to build weapons capable of striking the US mainland, its advances in missile technology have boosted the Japanese government’s case for increased defence spending [1].

Japan’s self-defence forces have dramatically increased their involvement in joint exercises with the US, and the defence ministry already plans to upgrade its ship-to-air and mobile missile defence capabilities.

The white paper, approved by Japan’s cabinet on Tuesday morning, was published less than two weeks after North Korea test-fired its second ICBM, which US experts have said may be able to reach most of the continental United States.

“Since last year, when [North Korea] forcibly implemented two nuclear tests and more than 20 ballistic missile launches, the security threats have entered a new stage,” the report said.

That missile was fired at an extremely high angle and landed about 120 miles (200km) off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.

The report was unclear, however, on whether North Korea had acquired the technological knowhow to fire a nuclear-tipped missile that would be able to re-enter earth’s atmosphere intact, according to Kyodo news.

The report also cited Pyongyang’s attempts to improve its ability to conduct a surprise attack using solid-fuel missiles, which can be prepared for launch in less time than liquid-fuelled rockets and are therefore harder to detect.

“The risk that North Korea will deploy nuclear-tipped missiles covering Japanese territory will grow as time passes,” it warned.

China, meanwhile, has promised to enforce UN sanctions against North Korea agreed at the weekend, even though it claims it has the most to lose from weakening its close trade links with Pyongyang.

Beijing has been criticised for failing to enforce previous sanctions packages, but China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said the measures were necessary to demonstrate international opposition to North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes.

“Owing to China’s traditional economic ties with North Korea, it will mainly be China paying the price for implementing the resolution,” a Chinese foreign ministry statement quoted Wang as saying at a regional security forum in Manila on Monday.

“But in order to protect the international non-proliferation system and regional peace and stability, China will … properly implement the entire contents of the relevant resolution.”

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

* The Guardian. Tuesday 8 August 2017 09.55 BST First published on Tuesday 8 August 2017 03.47 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/08/north-korea-nuclear-miniaturised-warhead-advanced-considerably-japan

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