Are There Deep Divisions In The White House On How To 'Handle' North Korea?

New York Times: Deep Divisions Emerge in Trump Administration as North Korea Threatens War

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — Senior American officials sent mixed signals on North Korea on Wednesday as President Trump’s “fire and fury” warning rattled allies and adversaries alike, a sign of his administration’s deep divisions as the outcast state once again threatened to wage nuclear war on the United States.

The president’s advisers calibrated his dire warning with statements that, if not directly contradictory, emphasized different points. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson stressed diplomacy and reassured Americans that they could “sleep well at night,” while Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said North Korea risked “the end of its regime and the destruction of its people” if it did not “stand down.”

North Korea gave no indication that it would do so. In a statement late Wednesday, the North Korean military dismissed Mr. Trump’s fire-and-fury warning on Tuesday as a “load of nonsense” and said only “absolute force” would work on someone so “bereft of reason.” The military threatened to “turn the U.S. mainland into the theater of a nuclear war” and added that any American strike on North Korean missile and nuclear targets would be “mercilessly repelled.”

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WNU Editor: Deep divisions? I do not know what the New York Times is talking about .... I posted numerous stories on North Korea yesterday, and the U.S. administration was consistent on reassuring friends and allies, while warning North Korea that their threats on launching military strikes was not going to be left unanswered. As to the New York Times criticism that the White House does not have a strategy in regards to North Korea .... I disagree .... their strategy has been to rely on China to reign in North Korea, but that strategy has clearly failed. What is also noteworthy is that North Korea (according to U.S. intelligence) has successfully been able to miniaturised their nuclear arsenal .... this is in every-way a bombshell report and a major reversal from what the experts have been saying for years was not possible .... to say that this has now completely changed the geopolitics in Asia is an understatement.