Don’t test our patience, says Pence
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IN a trip full of Cold War symbolism, US Vice President Mike Pence traveled to the tense zone separating North and South Korea yesterday and warned Pyongyang that after years of testing the US and South Korea with its nuclear ambitions, “the era of strategic patience is over.”
The unannounced visit at the start of his 10-day trip to Asia was a US show of force that allowed the vice president to gaze at North Korean soldiers from afar and stare directly across a border marked by razor wire. As the brown bomber jacket-clad vice president was briefed near the military demarcation line, two North Korean soldiers watched from a short distance away, one taking multiple photographs of the American visitor.
Pointing to the quarter-century since the United States first confronted North Korea over its attempts to build nuclear weapons, Pence said a period of patience had followed.
“But the era of strategic patience is over,” he said. “President Trump has made it clear that the patience of the United States and our allies in this region has run out and we want to see change. We want to see North Korea abandon its reckless path of the development of nuclear weapons, and also its continual use and testing of ballistic missiles is unacceptable.”
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking to reporters last night, said he hopes “there will be no unilateral actions like those we saw recently in Syria and that the US will follow the line that Trump repeatedly voiced during the election campaign.”
Meanwhile, China made a plea for a return to negotiations. Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said tensions need to be eased on the Korean Peninsula to bring the escalating dispute there to a peaceful resolution.
Lu said China wants to resume the multi-party negotiations that ended in stalemate in 2009 and suggested that US plans to deploy a missile defense system in South Korea were damaging its relations with China.
Later in the day, Pence reiterated in a joint statement alongside South Korean Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn that “all options are on the table” to deal with threat and said any use of nuclear weapons by Pyongyang would be met with “an overwhelming and effective response.”
Noting Trump’s recent military actions in Syria and Afghanistan, Pence said, “North Korea would do well not to test his resolve,” or the US armed forces in the region.
Pence’s visit came amid increasing tensions and heated rhetoric on the peninsula. While North Korea did not conduct a nuclear test, the specter of a potential test and an escalated US response has trailed Pence on his Asian tour.
On Sunday, Trump tweeted that China was working with the US on “the North Korea problem.”
His national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the US would rely on its allies as well as Chinese leadership to resolve the issues with North Korea.
McMaster cited Trump’s recent decision to order missile strikes in Syria after a chemical attack blamed on the Assad government, as a sign that the president “is clearly comfortable making tough decisions.”
But at the same time, McMaster said on “This Week” on ABC that “it’s time for us to undertake all actions we can, short of a military option, to try to resolve this peacefully.”
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