The United States does not have a “bloody nose strategy” for a limited preemptive strike against North Korea, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific said Thursday.
“We have no bloody nose strategy,” Admiral Harry Harris told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’m ready to execute whatever the president and the National Command Authority directs me to do. But a bloody nose strategy is not contemplated.”
If military action were to occur, Harris suggested, it would likely be broader than a limited strike.
“I believe that if we do anything along the kinetic region of the spectrum of conflict, that we have to be ready to do the whole thing,” he said. “We are ready to do the whole thing if ordered by the president.”
Reports in recent months indicated that U.S. officials had debated a targeted, symbolic strike against North Korea intended to pressure the Kim regime about its weapons programs.
Last Thursday Trump accepted an invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to meet, South Korea’s national security adviser told reporters. Kim, according to the official, said he was “committed to denuclearization,” agreed to “refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests,” and recognized that routine joint military exercises “must continue.” The meeting will occur by the end of May.
White House officials have since said that the meeting will occur if Kim keeps to those pledges, and that the administration will continue pursuing its strategy of maximum diplomatic and economic pressure against Pyongyang in the meantime.
Harris told lawmakers Thursday that the United States “can’t be overly optimistic” about the outcome of the potential meeting. “In the past in talking about other countries, we tend to use the term ‘trust but verify,’” he said. “In this case, I think it’s ‘distrust and verify.’”
While Harris said he was encouraged by the possibility of a summit, he stressed that North Korea “remains our most urgent security threat in the region.”
“This past year has seen rapid and comprehensive improvement in North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear capabilities,” Harris said. “This includes the detonation of its largest nuclear device, first ever launches of two different intercontinental ballistic missiles, and six launches of an intermediate range ballistic missile.”
“While some might dispute both reliability and quantity of the North’s strategic weapons,” he continued, “it is indisputable that KJU is rapidly closing the gap between rhetoric and capability.”
