Military option for North Korea not preferred, but would be 'devastating': Trump

President Donald Trump warned North Korea on Tuesday that any US military option would be "devastating" for Pyongyang, but said the use of force was not Washington's first option to deal with the North's ballistic and nuclear weapons program. "We are totally prepared for the second option, not a preferred option," Trump said at a White House news conference, referring to military force. "But if we take that option, it will be devastating, I can tell you that, devastating for North Korea. That's called the military option. If we have to take it, we will."
Bellicose statements by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent weeks have created fears that a miscalculation could lead to action with untold ramifications, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3. Despite the escalation in tensions, the United States has not detected any change in North Korea's military posture reflecting an increased threat, the top US military officer said on Tuesday.
The assessment by Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, about Pyongyang's military stance was in contrast to a South Korean lawmaker who said Pyongyang had boosted defenses on its east coast. "While the political space is clearly very charged right now, we haven't seen a change in the posture of North Korean forces, and we watch that very closely," Dunford told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his reappointment to his post.
In terms of a sense of urgency, "North Korea certainly poses the greatest threat today," Dunford testified. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Monday accused Trump of declaring war on the North and threatened that Pyongyang would shoot down US warplanes flying near the peninsula after American bombers flew close to the Korean peninsula last weekend. Ri was reacting to Trump's Twitter comments that Kim and Ri "won't be around much longer" if they acted on their threats toward the United States.
The United States has imposed sanctions on 26 individuals as part of its non-proliferation designations for North Korea as well as nine banks, including some with ties to China, according to the US Treasury Department's Office Of Foreign Assets Control Sanctions. The US sanctions target individuals in North Korea as well as some North Korean nationals in China, Russia, Libya and Dubai.
Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said war on the Korean peninsula would have no winner. "We hope the US and North Korean politicians have sufficient political judgment to realize that resorting to military force will never be a viable way to resolve the peninsula issue and their own concerns," Lu said.
"War on the peninsula will have no winner."
South Korean President Moon Jae-in urged Kim Jong Un to resume military talks and reunions of families split by the 1950-53 Korean War to ease tension. "Like I've said multiple times before, if North Korea stops its reckless choices, the table for talks and negotiations always remains open," Moon said. In Moscow, Russia's Foreign Ministry said it was working behind the scenes to find a political solution and that it plans to hold talks with a representative of North Korea's foreign ministry who is due to arrive in Moscow on Tuesday, the RIA news agency cited the North's embassy to Russia as saying. US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers, escorted by fighter jets, flew east of North Korea in a show of force after the heated exchange of rhetoric between Trump and Kim.