Former U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster has said that the United States accepting North Korea as a de facto nuclear power would prompt Japan to debate whether or not it needed its own nuclear weapons, a claim that comes amid rekindled tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
McMaster, in an interview published earlier this month with the Asahi Shimbun daily, was answering a question about the possibility of military conflict on the peninsula in 2017, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un unleashed a spate of missile launches and conducted its most powerful nuclear test to date. U.S. President Donald Trump responded with vitriol, vowing to rain ¡°fire and fury¡± on the North if Kim threatened the United States.
Asked about the possibility of war, the retired lieutenant general said: ¡°I do think that we were on a path that, if we were unable to alter it, that it was on a path to conflict.¡±
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.