US Officials: North Korea poses serious threat
By Lara Jakes and Donna Cassata, Associated Press
March 12th, 2013 @ 11:07am
WASHINGTON (AP) - An unpredictable North Korea, with its nuclear weapons and missile programs, stands as a serious threat to the United States and East Asia nations, the director of National Intelligence warned Tuesday in a sober assessment of worldwide threats.
Testifying before a Senate panel, James R. Clapper delivered the U.S. intelligence community's overview of global threats posed by terrorism, cyber attacks, weapons of mass destruction, the months-long civil war in Syria and the unsettled situation in post-Arab Spring nations.
The outlook on North Korea comes as the communist regime announced that it was "completely scrapping" the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and has maintained peace on the peninsula for more than half a century. The Obama administration on Monday slapped new sanctions against North Korea's primary exchange bank and several senior government officials as it expressed concern about the North's "bellicose rhetoric."
"The Intelligence community has long assessed that, in Pyongyang's view, its nuclear capabilities are intended for deterrence, international prestige and coercive diplomacy. We do not know Pyongyang's nuclear doctrine or employment concepts," Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Although we assess with low confidence that the North would only attempt to use nuclear weapons against U.S. forces or allies to preserve the Kim regime, we do not know what would constitute, from the North's perspective, crossing that threshold."
North Korea, led by its young leader Kim Jong Un, has defied the international community in the last three months, testing an intercontinental ballistic missile and a third nuclear bomb.
Pressed on North Korea, Clapper said he was "very concerned about the actions of the new young leader." He described the talk emanating from Pyongyang as "very belligerent."
U.S. Bolstering Missile Defense to Deter North Korea’s Threats
Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, center, after a Pentagon briefing where he said America was increasing its missile defenses.
By THOM SHANKER, DAVID E. SANGER and MARTIN FACKLER.
Published: March 15, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will spend $1 billion to deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors along the Pacific Coast to counter the growing reach of North Korea’s weapons, a decision accelerated by Pyongyang’s recent belligerence and indications that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, is resisting China’s efforts to restrain him.
The new deployments, announced by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday, will increase the number of ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska to 44 from 30 by 2017.
The missiles have a mixed record in testing, hitting dummy targets just 50 percent of the time, but officials said Friday’s announcement was intended not merely to present a credible deterrence to the North’s limited intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal. They said it is also meant to show South Korea and Japan that the United States is willing to commit resources to deterring the North and, at the same time, warn Beijing that it must restrain its ally or face an expanding American military focus on Asia.
“There’s been a quickening pace of provocations,” said one senior administration official, describing actions and words from North Korea and its new leader, Mr. Kim. “But the real accelerant was the fact that the North Koreans seemed more unmoored from their Chinese handlers than even we had feared.”
Although American and South Korean intelligence officials doubt the North is close to being able to follow through on a nuclear strike, or that it would even try, given its almost certain destruction, analysts say the country’s aggressive behavior is an important and worrying sign of changing calculations in the North.
read more at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/asia/us-to-bolster-missile-defense-against-north-korea.html?_r=0
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