Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday declined to connect the U.S. deployment of a Navy carrier strike group with rising tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program.
Mattis, speaking publicly to reporters at the Pentagon for the first time, portrayed the movements as more routine rather than a show of force to the North.
The North warned Tuesday it might launch a nuclear attack on the United States after the USS Carl Vinson along with two guided-missile destroyers and a cruiser were rerouted toward the peninsula on Saturday. The Navy publicly announced that the strike group dropped its scheduled plans to visit Australia.
“She’s on the way up there because that’s where we thought it was most prudent to have her right now,” Mattis said.
The strike group’s presence took on added meaning after two U.S. destroyers launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Shayrat airfield in Syria in retaliation for President Bashar Assad using chemical weapons on civilians in violation of international law.
North Korean officials told CNN that the “current grim situation” with the Navy strike group could justify the country’s “self-defensive and pre-emptive strike capabilities with the nuclear force at the core.”
President Trump’s order to strike Syria raised questions of how his administration might respond the North’s advancing nuclear program. The regime’s most recent ballistic missile test came last week as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were set to meet.
Trump tweeted an apparent warning Tuesday and urged China to intervene and rein in Kim Jong-un’s regime. But the president made clear he may act unilaterally to address the nuclear program, which violates United Nations sanctions and could soon produce a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile capable of reaching the continent United States.
“North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.,” Trump wrote.
The stakes are high: the North Koreans have artillery aimed at South Korea and the more than 10 million people who live in its bustling capital of Seoul. The United States also has about 28,000 troops stationed there who could be pulled into a costly and bloody conventional war on the peninsula.
