Tillerson vows ‘peaceful pressure campaign’ against North Korea

WASHINGTON – The U.S. seeks a peaceful resolution but is prepared to use military force if diplomatic efforts cannot end the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear-weapons program, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday.

“If our diplomatic efforts fail, though, our military option will be the only one left,” Tillerson said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But be clear: we seek a peaceful solution to this.”

Tillerson said the U.S. strategy is to pursue a “peaceful pressure campaign” based on not seeking either regime change or collapse in North Korea, an accelerated reunification of the Korean peninsula, or a reason to send in military forces.

The United Nations has passed two rounds of sanctions against North Korea, which has continued nonetheless to advance its nuclear program and test its missile capabilities despite worldwide condemnation.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Pyongyang is “already starting to feel the pinch” from the additional sanctions. “We have economically strangled North Korea at this point, and they have said as much,” she said.

President Donald Trump said last week, after the latest Security Council sanctions vote, that sanctions were “not a big deal,” and national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Sunday that there are doubts about whether economic measures will be enough to deter the regime. As a result, the U.S. must “make sure all options are under development,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

McMaster said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un must relinquish his nuclear weapons because Trump won’t tolerate the threat. Asked whether he was saying the president will strike if Kim doesn’t end his nuclear program, McMaster said, “He’s been very clear about that, that all options are on the table.”

Haley said Trump’s recent comment about raining “fire and fury” on North Korea wasn’t an empty threat, and that she’s “perfectly happy” having Defense Secretary James Mattis take over with military options if diplomacy fails.

“We were being responsible by trying to use every diplomatic possibility that we could possibly do,” Haley said on CNN. “We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we could do at the Security Council at this point.”