While UN imposes sanctions, Mattis sends his own message to North Korea

Defense Secretary Mattis's trip to Minot Air Force Base, while it reenforced the presence and strength of the US nuclear arsenal, was not intended to trigger a response from North Korea. But his visit still sent a clear message: An attack on the US is a mistake. 

|
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (l.) spoke to reporters on Sept. 3, 2017 during a visit to Minot Air Force Base.

He inspected a mock-up nuclear warhead, but there was no Kim Jong Un lookalike posing for photographs. He chatted with nuclear missile launch officers in their underground command post, but there was no talk of unleashing nuclear hell on North Korea.

A subtle, unspoken message of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' visit to this nuclear weapons base Wednesday was that America is a mature nuclear power not intimidated by threats from an upstart North Korean leader who flaunts his emerging nuclear muscle.

Mr. Mattis was quietly reminding North Korea that it has no match for a US nuclear arsenal that, while old, is still capable of sudden and swift destruction if Kim were to throw the first nuclear punch.

In his only public comments, Mattis cast his visit as part of an effort to ensure that the US maintains the kind of nuclear firepower that convinces any potential nuclear opponent that attacking would be suicidal.

"You can leave no doubt at all," he told reporters traveling with him. "Don't try it. It won't work. You can't take us out."

Mattis was taking such a restrained approach that he barred reporters from his town hall-style exchange with airmen on this base that hosts nuclear-capable B-52 bombers as well as the 91st Missile Wing, which has nearly 150 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles standing ready for launch at a moment's notice.

On Thursday, Mattis was getting classified briefings at Strategic Command, just outside of Omaha, Nebraska. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyton, the head of Strategic Command, would be in command of nuclear forces in the event President Trump ordered them into combat.

Mattis said his visits to Minot and Strategic Command are intended to inform his "nuclear posture review," a top-to-bottom reassessment of US nuclear weapons policy. He said the review is nearly complete but he would not cite a target date. A major question posed in the review is how big the US nuclear force needs to be to remain a deterrent to nuclear war.

Mattis said Wednesday he has become convinced that the United States must keep all three parts of its nuclear force, rather than eliminate one, as he once suggested. In congressional testimony in January 2015, while he was a private citizen, Mattis said eliminating the ground-based component – intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs – would "reduce the false alarm danger." He was referring to the argument made by some nuclear policy experts that because ICBMs are postured to be launched on warning of incoming missiles, a false warning might trigger nuclear war.

Mattis has called the submarine-based component "sacrosanct" and has said it is necessary to retain the ability to fire nuclear weapons from planes. Together, those three prongs constitute what the military calls its nuclear triad.

"I've questioned the triad," Mattis told reporters flying with him to Minot Air Force Base, a nuclear base in North Dakota. He said his view has now changed.

"I cannot solve the deterrent problem reducing it from a triad. If I want to send the most compelling message, I have been persuaded that the triad in its framework is the right way to go," Mattis said.

Mattis has previously indicated this evolution in thinking, but his statements Wednesday were emphatic.

The key to avoiding nuclear war, he said, is maintaining a nuclear arsenal sufficient to convince a potential enemy it could not win a nuclear war with the US and thus should not start one.

"You want the enemy to look at it and say, this is impossible to take out in a first strike, and the [US] retaliation is such that we don't want to do it," Mattis said. "That's how a deterrent works."

Thus the US will keep nuclear missile submarines, land-based nuclear missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft, he indicated.

Mattis also said the Trump administration is reviewing the value of the New Start treaty negotiated with Russia by the Obama administration in 2010. The treaty, already in effect, requires reductions by both sides to a maximum of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads by February.

"We're still engaged in determining whether it's a good idea," Mattis said, adding that the question is linked to adherence by others to separate but related arms treaties. That was an apparent reference to US allegations that Russia is violating the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty from 1987.

Mattis declined to discuss the matter further, except to say the administration is not considering withdrawing from New Start. It's an open question whether it will seek to extend the treaty, which expires in February 2021.

Trump has criticized New Start as a bad deal for America.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to While UN imposes sanctions, Mattis sends his own message to North Korea
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2017/0914/While-UN-imposes-sanctions-Mattis-sends-his-own-message-to-North-Korea
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe