China can expect to come under increasing pressure to restrain North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
“There was a soft approach to China in the past presidency and what I can tell you now is we’re going to go harder on China,” Ambassador Nikki Haley said Friday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom.” “We’re going to say, look, if you really are wanting to partner with this, if you really are wanting to stop the nuclear testing that is going on in North Korea, prove it.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is traveling in Asia to discuss possible avenues for restraining North Korea, which claims to be in “the final stages” of developing a missile that could deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States. China, long regarded as an enabler of the North Korean regime, has tightened implementation of a recent package of international sanctions on the country’s coal industry, but Tillerson wants a more aggressive suite of countermeasures.
“The policy of strategic patience has ended,” Tillerson said in South Korea. “We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures.”
Tillerson added the United States would carry out military strikes if the North Koreans “elevate the threats of their weapons program to the level that we believe requires action.” Haley suggested that threat might induce China and Russia to cooperate with the United States.
“All options are on the table,” she said. “What you are going to see is we are going to go to China and say, ‘OK, enough of saying that you are doing more. We need to know exactly what you are doing and what level you are willing to go to.’ We are going to say the same thing to Russia. We need to see some pressure from them on North Korea. And then accordingly based on what those two do, the United States will respond.”
Both China and Russia are wary of U.S. military capabilities in the region and they have opposed vehemently the deployment of a missile defense battery to South Korea. “We are going to go through and ask them to push towards sanctions and push towards talks with North Korea and tell them we want them to stop and based on their actions we will act accordingly,” Haley said.
