H.R. McMaster: North Korea Is the Biggest Immediate Threat to U.S., World
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
BAIER: "It’s great to be here, after the introduction and laying out the principles of the strategy that you said the president is going to unveil, let’s start broadly. In your mind, what is the greatest threat to national security?"
McMASTER: "Well, I would say that as we look at time horizon associated with threats, the greatest immediate threat to the United States and to the world is the threat caused by the rogue regime in North Korea and continued efforts to develop a long-range nuclear capability and so it’s immensely important that we work together with all of our allies, partners everyone internationally to convince Kim Jong un that the continued pursuit of these capabilities is a dead end for him and his regime."
BAIER: "So let me get a little specific on North Korea, we are being told that the ICBM, the most recent launch broke up on reentry. Is North Korea having trouble on that reentry step and thereby right now the U.S. Overall is not at threat from their ballistic missiles?"
McMASTER: "Well, it’ll take some time to assess each of the missile launches but what is clear is that every time, every time he conducts a missile launch and nuclear test, he gets better and — and whether it’s a success or failure isn’t as important as understanding that over the years he’s been learning from failures, improving and thereby increasing his threat to all of us.
BAIER: "So the potential of war with North Korea increased since the latest launch?"
McMASTER: "I think it’s increasing every day which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem, not just us, right, but the United States, all allies and partners as we know China has tremendous coercive economic power over North Korea. I mean, you can’t shoot a missile without fuel, right, and so there are — there are ways to address this problem short of our conflict but it is a race because he’s getting closer and closer and there’s not much time."
