President Trump should ensure “credible military options remain on the table” for confronting North Korea, according to Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.
“Going forward, it is imperative that sanctions on North Korea remain in place, that credible military options remain on the table, and that the U.S. continues to bolster our military – especially our homeland missile defense,” the Armed Services Committee member said Tuesday.
Sullivan, like many of his fellow Republicans, praised Trump “for implementing a maximum pressure campaign that ultimately brought Kim Jong Un to the table.” And he endorsed the president’s statement that international sanctions must remain in effect until North Korea takes major action to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. But he resisted Trump’s conclusion that U.S. military exercises in the region are “provocative.”
“They deter aggression, they do not provoke it,” Sullivan, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves who cited his experience training on the peninsula as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, said in the statement. “It is North Korea that has a long and infamous history of provocation that dates back to their 1950 invasion of South Korea backed by the Soviet Union. It is North Korea that must earn back the trust of the international community.”
That was a pointed contradiction of Trump’s explanation for the suspension of joint military exercises with South Korea. “We’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money,” the president said. “Plus, I think it’s very provocative.”
Trump’s decision to cancel the “war games” has been described as a needless concession by many critics, while the Chinese have hailed the move as proof that the U.S. is following Beijing’s road map for defusing the crisis. He has received some support from a leading think tank on nonproliferation issues, one that was critical of the Iran nuclear agreement throughout Trump’s internal debate on whether to remain in the deal or exit the pact.
“A relaxation of security concerns for a proliferant state is often key to abandoning nuclear weapons capabilities,” the Institute for Science and International Security said Tuesday. “We should know very quickly whether Chairman Kim is serious and can deliver on his pledge to denuclearize. The parties need to work out the verification arrangements and a concrete timetable for denuclearization. Until the time when North Korea’s most threatening nuclear weapons capabilities are verifiably dismantled, sanctions and international pressure must remain strongly in place.”
