Chinese leader Xi Jinping has stressed the need to reject confrontation in Asia, warning against the risk of cold war tensions, as leaders gather for the last of three world summits hosted in the region this month.
Xi began the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in Bangkok by staking out his wish for China to be viewed as a driver of regional unity in a written speech released ahead of Friday’s opening day – which also appeared to make veiled jabs at the United States.
The Asia-Pacific region is “no one’s backyard” and should not become “an arena for big power contest,” Xi said in the statement, in which he also decried “any attempt to politicize and weaponize economic and trade relations.”
“No attempt to wage a new cold war will ever be allowed by the people or by our times,” he added in the remarks, which were addressed to business leaders meeting alongside the summit and did not name the US.
Xi struck a milder tone in a separate address to APEC leaders on Friday morning as the main event got underway, calling for stability, peace and the development of a “more just world order.”
Leaders and representatives from 21 economies on both sides of the Pacific meeting in the Thai capital for the two-day summit will grapple with that question of how best to promote stability, in a region sitting on the fault lines of growing US-China competition and grappling with regional tensions and the economic fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Those challenges were palpable Friday morning, as North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the second weapons test by Kim Jong Un’s regime in two days amid increased provocation from Pyongyang.
US Vice President Kamala Harris gathered on the sidelines of the summit with leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada to condemn the launch in an unscheduled media briefing.
In a speech Friday to business leaders, Harris said the US had a “profound stake” in the region, and described America as a “strong partner” to its economies and a “major engine of global growth.”
Without mentioning China in her address, she also promoted American initiatives to counter Beijing’s regional influence, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, launched by Washington earlier this year, and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.
“The US is here to stay,” said the vice president, who is representing the US at the summit after US President Joe Biden returned home for a family event after attending meetings around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the G20 summit in Bali in recent days.
Despite the US-China rivalry, the three summits have also brought opportunities to defuse rising tensions and strained communication between the world’s top two powers.
US-China relations have deteriorated sharply in recent years, with the two sides clashing over Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, North Korea, and the transfer of technology among other issues.
In August, following a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, China fired multiple missiles into waters around the self-governing island and ramped up naval and warplane exercises in the surrounding area. Beijing claims the democratic island as its territory, despite never having controlled it, and suspended a number of dialogues with the US over the visit.
A landmark meeting between Xi and Biden on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali on Monday – the leaders’ first since Biden took office – ended with the two sides agreeing to bolster communication and collaborate on issues like climate and food security.
After landing in Bangkok Thursday, Chinese leader Xi sat down with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in the first meeting between leaders of the two Asian countries in nearly three years. Both sides called for more cooperation following a breakdown in communication over points of contention from Taiwan to disputed islands.
At stake in the broader meeting, however, is whether leaders can find consensus on how to treat Russia’s aggression in a concluding document, or whether differences in views between the broad grouping of nations will stymie such a result, despite months of discussion between APEC nations’ lower-level officials.
In an address to business leaders alongside the summit Friday morning, French President Emmanuel Macron, who was invited by host country Thailand, called for consensus and unity against Moscow’s aggression.
“Help us to convey the same message to Russia: stop the war, respect the international order and come back to the table,” he said.
Macron also called out the US-China rivalry, warning of the risk to peace if countries are forced to choose between the two great powers.
“We need a single global order,” Macron said to applause from business leaders.
North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed near Japanese waters Friday in its second major weapons test this month, South Korea and Japan said. The missile had the potential to reach all of the U.S. mainland, Japan’s defense minister said.
The United States quickly condemned the launch and vowed to take “all necessary measures” to guarantee the safety of its own mainland and of allies South Korea and Japan.
At the regional APEC summit in Bangkok, Thailand, Vice President Kamala Harris called Friday’s launch a “brazen violation of multiple U.N. Security resolutions” that “destabilizes security in the region, and unnecessarily raises tensions. We strongly condemn these actions and we again call for North Korea to stop further unlawful, destabilizing acts. On behalf of the United States, I reaffirm our ironclad commitment to our Indo-Pacific alliances.
“Together, the countries represented here will continue to urge North Korea to commit to serious and sustained diplomacy,” she continued.
Later, the U.S, South Korea, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia all condemned the launch in the strongest terms at an emergency meeting on the APEC sidelines, Tokyo said, the Reuters news agency reported.
Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergei Ryabkov, on the other hand, was quoted by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency as saying that that while Moscow prefers a diplomatic approach toward the Korean peninsula, “it’s been particularly evident recently that the United States and its allies in the region prefer a different path. It’s as if Pyongyang’s patience is being tested.” Agence France-Presse reported on Moscow’s reaction.
In response to the ICBM test, The U.S. and South Korea held joint air force drills Friday with F-35A fighters, South Korea’s defense ministry said, according to Reuters.
Pyongyang’s ongoing torrid run of weapons tests seeks to advance its nuclear arsenal and win greater concessions in eventual diplomacy, and the launches come as China and Russia have opposed U.S. moves to toughen sanctions aimed at curbing the North’s nuclear program.
Vice President Kamala Harris holds a meeting about North Korea’s missile launch on Nov. 18, 2022 with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo of South Korea, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok, Thailand.
Haiyun Jiang / Pool via Reuters
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the ICBM launch from North Korea’s capital region around 10:15 a.m. and the weapon flew toward the North’s eastern coast across the country. Japan said the ICBM appeared to have flown on a high trajectory and landed west of Hokkaido.
According to South Korean and Japanese estimates, the North Korean missile flew about 3,600-3,790 miles at a maximum altitude of 620 miles.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters the altitude suggests the missile was launched on a high angle. He said depending on the weight of a warhead placed on the missile, the weapon has a range exceeding 9,320 miles, “in which case it could cover the entire mainland United States.”
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the launch “needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing” regional security while showing the North’s prioritizing of unlawful weapons programs over the well-being of its people. She said President Biden was briefed over the launch.
“Pyongyang must immediately cease its destabilizing actions and instead choose diplomatic engagement,” Watson said.
A TV screen shows a file image of a North Korean missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 18, 2022. South Korea said the missile North Korea launched Friday is likely an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Ahn Young-joon / AP
Hamada, the Japanese defense minister, called the launch “a reckless act that threatens Japan as well as the region and the international community.”
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff called the launch “a grave provocation and serious threat” that undermines international and regional peace and security. It said South Korea maintains readiness to make “an overwhelming response to any North Korean provocation” amid close coordination with the United States.
After being briefed on the launch, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered officials to boost security cooperation with the United States and Japan and to implement unspecified deterrence steps that were previously agreed upon with the United States. Yoon also ordered officials to push for strong international condemnations and sanctions on North Korea, according to his office.
North Korea also launched an ICBM on Nov. 3, but experts said that weapon failed to fly its intended route and fell into the ocean after a stage separation. That test was believed to have involved a developmental ICBM called Hwasong-17.
North Korea has two other types of ICBMs – Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 – and their test-launches in 2017 proved they could potentially reach parts of the U.S. homeland.
The Hwasong-17 has a longer potential range than the others, and its huge size suggests it’s designed to carry multiple nuclear warheads to defeat missile defense systems. Some experts say the Nov. 3 test showed some technological progress in the development of the Hwasong-17, given that in its earlier test in March, the missile exploded soon after liftoff.
It wasn’t immediately known if North Korea launched a Hwasong-17 missile again on Friday or something else.
In recent months, North Korea has performed dozens of shorter-range missile tests that it called simulations of nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. targets. But it had halted weapons launches for about a week before it fired a short-range ballistic missile on Thursday.
Before Thursday’s launch, the North’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, threatened to launch “fiercer” military responses to the U.S. bolstering its security commitment to its allies South Korea and Japan.
Choe was referring to Mr. Biden’s recent trilateral summit with Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Cambodia. In their joint statement, the three leaders strongly condemned North Korea’s recent missile tests and agreed to work together to strengthen deterrence. Mr. Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including its nuclear arms.
Choe didn’t say what steps North Korea could take but said that “the U.S. will be well aware that it is gambling, for which it will certainly regret.”
Pyongyang sees the U.S. military presence in the region as proof of its hostility toward North Korea. It has said its recent series of weapons launches were its response to what it called provocative military drills between the United States and South Korea.
North Korea has been under multiple rounds of United Nations sanctions over its previous nuclear and missile tests. But no fresh sanctions have been applied this year though it has conducted dozens of ballistic missile launches, which are banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
That’s possibly because China and Russia, two of the U.N. council’s veto-wielding members, oppose new U.N. sanctions. Washington is locked in a strategic competition with Beijing and in a confrontation with Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
There have been concerns that North Korea might conduct its first nuclear test in five years as its next major step toward bolstering its military capability against the United States and its allies.
In late October, U.S. and South Korean officials confirmed to CBS News that Pyongyang is preparing to test an atomic weapon soon, in what would be its first nuclear test since 2017.
The North has argued a U.S. military presence in the region as proof of its hostility toward the country. It has said its recent series of weapons launches were response to what it called provocative military drills between the United States and South Korea.
North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday, the second missile test by the Kim Jong Un regime in two days, in actions condemned as unacceptable by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The ICBM was launched around 10:15 a.m. local time from the Sunan area of the North Korean capital Pyongyang, and flew about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) east, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
Kishida said it likely fell in Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), about 210 kilometers (130 miles) west of the Japanese island of Oshima Oshima, according to the Japan Coast Guard. It did not fly over Japan.
“North Korea is continuing to carry out provocative actions at frequency never seen before,” Kishida told reporters Friday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.
“I want to restate that we cannot accept such actions,” he said.
The Japanese government will continue to collect and analyze information and provide prompt updates to the public, he said. So far, there have been no reports of damage to vessels at sea, Kishida added.
The ICBM reached an altitude of about 6,100 kilometers (3,790 miles) at Mach 22, or 22 times the speed of sound, according to the JCS, which said details were being analyzed by intelligence authorities in South Korea and the US.
Friday’s missile was about 100 kilometers short in altitude and distance compared to Pyongyang’s missile test on March 24, which recorded the highest altitude and longest duration of any North Korean missile ever tested, according to a report from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) at the time. That missile reached an altitude of 6,248.5 kilometers (3,905 miles) and flew a distance of 1,090 kilometers (681 miles), KCNA reported.
Calling the launch a “significant provocation and a serious act of threat,” the JCS warned the North of violating the UN Security Council’s resolution and urged it to stop immediately.
The Misawa Air Base issued a shelter in place alert after the firing of the missile, according to US Air Force Col. Greg Hignite, director of public affairs for US Forces Japan. It has now been lifted and the US military is still analyzing the flight path, he said.
US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the missile launch and his national security team will “continue close consultations with Allies and partners,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in statement Friday.
“The door has not closed on diplomacy, but Pyongyang must immediately cease its destabilizing actions and instead choose diplomatic engagement,” Watson said. “The United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and Republic of Korea and Japanese allies.”
Friday’s launch comes one day after Pyongyang fired a short-range ballistic missile into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and issued a stern warning to the United States of a “fiercer military counteraction” to its tighter defense ties with South Korea and Japan.
It’s the second suspected test launch of an ICBM this month – an earlier missile fired on November 3 appeared to have failed, a South Korean government source told CNN at the time.
The aggressive acceleration in weapons testing and rhetoric has sparked alarm in the region, with the US, South Korea and Japan responding with missile launches and joint military exercises.
Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of International Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said North Korea is “trying to disrupt international cooperation against it by escalating military tensions and suggesting it has the capability of holding American cities at risk of nuclear attack.”
North Korea has carried out missile tests on 34 days this year, sometimes firing multiple missiles in a single day, according to a CNN count. The tally includes both cruise and ballistic missiles, with the latter making up the majority of North Korean test this year.
There are substantial differences between these two types of missiles.
A ballistic missile is launched with a rocket and travels outside Earth’s atmosphere, gliding in space before it re-enters the atmosphere and descends, powered only by gravity to its target.
A cruise missile is powered by a jet engine, stays inside Earth’s atmosphere during its flight and is maneuverable with control surfaces similar to an airplane’s.
Ankit Panda, senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that while he wouldn’t see Friday’s presumed ICBM launch “as a message, per se,” it can be viewed as part of North Korea’s “process of developing capabilities Kim has identified as essential for the modernization of their nuclear forces.”
The US and international observers have been warning for months that North Korea appears to be preparing for an underground nuclear test, with satellite imagery showing activity at the nuclear test site. Such a test would be the hermit nation’s first in five years.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Center for Non-proliferation Studies, said the ICBM test was designed to validate parts of North Korea’s missile program, something that Kim Jong Un has vowed to do this year.
The recent short-range tests “are exercises for frontline artillery units practicing preemptive nuclear strikes,” Lewis said.
He dismissed any political or negotiating message from the tests.
“I wouldn’t think about these tests as primarily signaling. North Korea isn’t interested talking right now,” Lewis said.
North Korea fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile that landed near Japanese territorial waters Friday, its neighbors said, the second such major weapons test this month that shows its determination to perfect weapons systems targeting the U.S. mainland.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the missile was launched at 10:15 a.m. local time Friday from Pyongyang. It traveled a distance of about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), at an altitude of 3,790 miles (6,100 kilometers), and reached a speed of Mach 22, before landing in the East Sea.
The Japanese Defense Ministry also initially identified the weapon as an ICBM-class ballistic missile. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, visiting Bangkok to attend a regional summit, told reporters it was believed to have landed at sea inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone west of Hokkaido, Japan’s main northern island.
A “seek cover order” for the Misawa Air Base in northern Japan was issued as a “precautionary measure” by the commander of the 35th Fighter Wing, the U.S. base said in a statement posted to Facebook. The order was lifted at 10:55 a.m. local time Friday.
“At this time, there are no additional indications or warnings of an immediate threat to Misawa Air Base,” the statement read.
A TV screen shows a file image of a North Korea missile launch during a news program being watched at the Yongsan Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 17, 2022. North Korea fired one short-range ballistic missile into the East Sea that day.
Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
If confirmed, it would be North Korea’s first ICBM launch in about two weeks. Outside experts said that an ICBM launched by North Korea on Nov. 3 failed to fly its intended flight.
The Nov. 3 test was believed to have involved a new type of developmental ICBM. North Korea has two other types of ICBM — Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 and their test-launches in 2017 proved they could potentially reach parts of the U.S. homeland.
The Hwasong-17 has a longer potential range than the others and its huge size suggests it’s designed to carry multiple nuclear warheads to defeat missile defense systems. Some experts say the Nov. 3 test showed some technological progress in the development of the Hwasong-17, given that in its earlier test in March, the missile exploded soon after liftoff.
“North Korea has been repeatedly firing missiles this year at an unprecedented frequency and is significantly escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamad told reporters.
South Korea’s presidential office said it convened an emergency security meeting to discuss the North Korean launch.
Before Thursday’s launch, the North’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, threatened to launch “fiercer” military responses to the U.S. bolstering its security commitment to its allies South Korea and Japan.
Choe was referring to U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent trilateral summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Cambodia. In their joint statement, the three leaders strongly condemned North Korea’s recent missile tests and agreed to work together to strengthen deterrence. Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including its nuclear arms.
Choe didn’t say what steps North Korea could take but said that “the U.S. will be well aware that it is gambling, for which it will certainly regret.”
In late October, U.S. and South Korean officials confirmed to CBS News that North Korea is preparing to test an atomic weapon soon, in what would be its first nuclear test since 2017.
The North has argued a U.S. military presence in the region as proof of its hostility toward the country. It has said its recent series of weapons launches were response to what it called provocative military drills between the United States and South Korea.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired a suspected long-range missile designed to strike the mainland U.S. on Friday, its neighbors said, a day after the North resumed its testing activities in an apparent protest over U.S. moves to solidify its alliances with South Korea and Japan.
The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it detected a ballistic missile launch off the North’s eastern coast on Friday morning. It later said the missile launched is likely an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Japanese Defense Ministry also said in a statement that North Korea fired an ICBM-class ballistic missile from its western coastal area that flew toward its eastern waters across the country. It said the missile, launched at around 10:14 a.m. (0114GMT) was still in flight and may land inside of the Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone.
If confirmed, it would be North Korea’s first ICBM launch in about two weeks. Outside experts said that an ICBM launched by North Korea on Nov. 3 failed to fly its intended flight.
The Nov. 3 test was believed to have involved a new type of developmental ICBM. North Korea has two other types of ICBM — Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 and their test-launches in 2017 proved they could potentially reach parts of the U.S. homeland.
South Korea’s presidential office said it convened an emergency security meeting to discuss the North Korean launch.
“North Korea has been repeatedly firing missiles this year at an unprecedented frequency and is significantly escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula,” Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamad told reporters.
The launch is the latest in a slew of missile tests by North Korea in recent weeks. But the country had halted weapons launches for about a week before it fired a short-range ballistic missile on Thursday.
Before Thursday’s launch, the North’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, threatened to launch “fiercer” military responses to the U.S. bolstering its security commitment to its allies South Korea and Japan.
Choe was referring to U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent trilateral summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Cambodia. In their joint statement, the three leaders strongly condemned North Korea’s recent missile tests and agreed to work together to strengthen deterrence. Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including its nuclear arms.
Choe didn’t say what steps North Korea could take but said that “the U.S. will be well aware that it is gambling, for which it will certainly regret.”
The North has argued a U.S. military presence in the region as proof of its hostility toward the country. It has said its recent series of weapons launches were response to what it called provocative military drills between the United States and South Korea.
North Korea launched yet another ballistic missile toward its eastern waters on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, hours after the North threatened to launch “fiercer” military responses to the U.S. bolstering its security commitment to its allies South Korea and Japan.
The launch of a short-range ballistic missile occurred at 10:48 a.m. local time Thursday into the East Sea, originating from the North Korean city of Wonsan, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff reported. The missile flew a distance of about 240 kilometers, at an altitude of 47 kilometers, and at a speed of Mach 4, South Korea’s military estimated.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that it was “aware” of the launch and was “consulting closely with our allies and partners.” The agency added that it had determined the launch did “not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territories, or to our allies.”
Earlier Thursday, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hue warned that a recent U.S.-South Korea-Japan summit accord on the North would leave tensions on the Korean Peninsula “more unpredictable.”
Choe’s statement was North Korea’s first official response to President Biden’s trilateral summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Cambodia on Sunday. In their joint statement, the three leaders strongly condemned North Korea’s recent missile tests and agreed to work together to strengthen deterrence, while Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including its nuclear arms.
People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 3, 2022.
JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
Choe said the U.S.-South Korea-Japan summit will bring the situation on the Korean Peninsula to “a more unpredictable phase.”
“The keener the U.S. is on the ‘bolstered offer of extended deterrence’ to its allies and the more they intensify provocative and bluffing military activities on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, the fiercer (North Korea’s) military counteraction will be, in direct proportion to it,” Choe said. “It will pose a more serious, realistic and inevitable threat to the U.S. and its vassal forces.”
Choe didn’t say what steps North Korea could take but said that “The U.S. will be well aware that it is gambling for which it will certainly regret.”
North Korea has steadfastly maintained its recent weapons testing activities are legitimate military counteractions to what it calls military drills between U.S. and South Korean forces, which it views as a practice to launch attacks on the North.
In late October, U.S. and South Korean officials confirmed to CBS News that North Korea is preparing to test an atomic weapon soon, in what would be its first nuclear test since 2017.
And earlier this month, North Korea fired dozens of missiles and flew warplanes toward the sea — triggering evacuation alerts in some South Korean and Japanese areas — in protest of massive U.S.-South Korean air force drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal.
On Nov. 7, North Korea released a statement saying that its flurry of missile tests were practice to “mercilessly” strike key South Korean and U.S. targets, such as air bases and operation command systems.
BUDAPEST — On an early morning drive from his residence to the U.S. Embassy, David Pressman kept a close eye on his surroundings.
Look, the new U.S. ambassador to Hungary said, pointing out the government-funded billboards dotting Budapest’s streets.
“The Brussels sanctions are ruining us!” they declared, the word “sanctions” emblazoned across a flying bomb.
One by one, the posters whizzed by, blaring the same ominous warning.
These types of signs have been a feature of the Budapest landscape for years, spinning up a conspiratorial gallery of foreign enemies Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has used to instill fear and anger in the Hungarian population as he vies to keep his grip on power.
But historically, the U.S. — like many of its Western partners — has stayed relatively quiet in public about these targeted messaging campaigns and the rise of anti-Western government rhetoric, which often reflected the country’s democratic backsliding and the local influence of Russian propaganda.
With Pressman, that has changed. Pressman’s presence alone is an implicit rebuke of Orbán’s strongman, culture wars agenda. Pressman is a human rights lawyer, has a male partner and has worked closely with George Clooney, a totem of the Fox News-caricatured “Hollywood liberal elite.”
And in just two months on the job, the new American ambassador has become a household name in Budapest for his willingness to call out — and even troll — the Orbán government’s overtly propagandistic and conspiratorial bombast.
There is, Pressman said in his first interview since taking his post, a “need to be both respectful and more candid about what we’re seeing.”
Recently, the U.S. embassy posted a once-unthinkable video quiz challenging people to guess whether quotes came from Hungarian public figures or Russian President Vladimir Putin. The answer, of course, was never Putin.
“I’m concerned when I see missiles flying from Moscow into children’s playgrounds in Kyiv — and see the foreign minister of Hungary flying into Moscow to do Facebook Live conferences from Gazprom headquarters,” the ambassador told POLITICO.
For this approach, Pressman has become the latest foreign enemy in Budapest.
In a country that recently banned the portrayal of LGBTQ+ content to minors, Pressman has put his personal life on display | Janka Szitas/U.S. Embassy Budapest
The newspapers cover him regularly — “Clown diplomacy,” one declared. State-owned and Orbán-friendly TV channels are similarly obsessed, portraying the American ambassador as a secretive colonial overlord sent to meddle in Hungary’s internal affairs.
And in a country that recently banned the portrayal of LGBTQ+ content to minors, Pressman has put his personal life on display, posting photos of his partner and their two kids as they arrived to present his diplomatic credentials.
“I think it speaks for itself,” Pressman said. “Sometimes the power of example,” he added, “is the most powerful way we can communicate about shared values and concerns.”
In many ways, Pressman’s story is emblematic of the evolution of the broader relationship between the U.S. and Hungary. For years, an ambassador posting in Budapest was primarily considered a symbolic role, reserved for wealthy political donors with no foreign policy expertise.
Hungary, the thinking went, was a reliable European Union and NATO member that required little extra attention in Washington. But the erosion of democratic norms — combined with Moscow’s influence in Budapest and Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine — has changed the calculus.
“The stakes right now are huge,” the ambassador said. “The politicization and partisanization of the relationship,” he added, “is not sustainable.”
A pragmatic idealist
Pressman, unlike many of his predecessors, is no novice to U.S. foreign policy.
As a young lawyer, he teamed up with Clooney on a campaign to get those in power to pay attention to atrocities in Darfur — later earning the nickname “Cuz” from Clooney. He also made stops as an aide to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as a Homeland Security Department official and a White House staffer during the Obama years. In 2014, he landed in New York as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for special political affairs.
Those experiences — and his resulting relationships across government — have given Pressman the backing to make significant changes to how the U.S. approaches Orbán’s government.
Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author-turned-diplomat, was the one who brought the then-32-year-old Pressman to the White House before working closely together in New York when she became U.N. ambassador. Pressman, she said, was her go-to person for tough assignments.
Once, she recalled, her staff needed to convince China to join sanctions against North Korea after a nuclear test.
“David,” she told POLITICO, “is a person that I entrusted in the day-to-day to work with the Chinese ambassador to extract as robust a set of sanctions as possible.”
“When we see insane Kremlin stories being re-propagated in the Hungarian media, we’re gonna call that out, because we have to”, David Pressman said | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty images
Pressman, Power recounted, was so well-prepared that it was as if he “got a PhD in iron ore trafficking.” His prep work also paid off. “No one had invested more in advance of the nuclear tests in a relationship with his Chinese counterpart that he could then call upon when it mattered for the United States,” she added.
Now, Hungary matters for the United States. In the last 12 years, Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party has taken control of much of the media landscape, placed allies at the helm of independent state institutions, channeled government resources into political campaigning and nurtured ties to Moscow and Beijing. The development has strained the bedrock of the global democratic order.
On a recent fall day, the ambassador invited POLITICO to visit his home at 7:30 in the morning, as his sons were getting ready to leave for school. He then spent the day racing between meetings with anti-corruption experts, a founding member of Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, Hungarian students and a fellow ambassador.
At the discussion with anti-corruption campaigners, Pressman placed a large notebook on the table and began scribbling as he tossed out a flurry of questions: Who is involved? How does this work? How do you know that?
Later, Pressman popped into a graffiti-decorated pub and took his seat among a cluster of high school and university students. Again, the questions came quickly: How do your peers see the U.S.? Is there anyone in the government you trust? What comes to mind on Russia?
Pressman is known as an idealist. As the White House National Security Council’s director for war crimes and atrocities, he decorated his office — no bigger than two large filing cabinets — with photos of indicted war criminals the U.S. was trying to apprehend, Power recalled.
But he still professes a pragmatic approach. His goal, he insists, is to build relationships with the Hungarian government — even as he needles it over anti-democratic behavior. The two sides can work together, he noted.
“When we see insane Kremlin stories being re-propagated in the Hungarian media, we’re gonna call that out, because we have to,” he said.
But, Pressman added, “all of that is with the intent to pull us closer together — not to push us apart.”
A troubled relationship
Even before the ambassador’s arrival, anti-American rhetoric had been on the rise in Hungary.
In the government-controlled press, the U.S. is both the boogeyman behind the invasion of Ukraine and the puppet master of Hungary’s opposition parties. Fidesz-linked outlets even spread paranoid conspiracy theories about a U.S. diplomat who died in a traffic accident.
But in recent weeks, the vitriol — and the personal attacks on Pressman — has reached a fever pitch.
As Orbán’s allies have tightened their judicial system vice grip, the EU and others have made strengthening the council a priority | John Thys/AFP via Getty images
One sharp escalation occurred after Pressman posted a photo of himself meeting with two judges from the National Judicial Council.
The group’s bureaucratic name belies its heated symbolic and political importance in Hungary.
The council is meant to help oversee Hungary’s judiciary. So as Orbán’s allies have tightened their judicial system vice grip, the EU and others have made strengthening the council a priority.
Pressman’s decision, just weeks into his job, to sit down with the council’s representatives sparked dozens of articles attacking him and breathless TV coverage.
“Unprecedented serious interference in the judiciary,” blared a headline in the government-linked Origo news portal. “Today what comes to mind is that if we have such friends, then we don’t need enemies,” the Orbán-adjacent Magyar Nemzet newspaper pronounced.
Even in private, Hungarian officials stewed. “His meeting with two infamous judges,” said one senior Hungarian official, ”was a pretty unfortunate beginning.” A spokesperson for the Hungarian government did not respond to questions about Pressman.
Judge Csaba Vasvári — the council’s spokesperson and one of the figures who met with the ambassador — told POLITICO the public pillorying is fueling a “strong chilling effect” within the judiciary.
Instead of letting it pass, Pressman pushed back — in his own style.
The U.S. embassy posted a host of photos of politicians and senior diplomats meeting with judges — including, cheekily, a smiling younger Orbán standing beside former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
“What is inconsistent with normal diplomatic practice between allies,” the embassy said in a public statement, “is the recent coordinated media attack on the spokesperson and international liaison of the National Judicial Council in what appears to be an effort to instill fear in those who wish to engage with representatives of the United States.”
A politicized alliance
Orbán and his government have made no secret of their disdain for Democrats.
Democrats, they say, want to impose their liberal ideology on Hungary. They are the ones who ruined the relationship with Hungary. They lack family values. They are not a Christian government.
“Always great to hear from our good friend @realDonaldTrump. Let’s make US-HU relations great again!” Orbán tweeted recently at the Twitter-banished ex-president | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty images
Republicans are the exact opposite, in the government’s narrative. Orbán himself has personally courted MAGA-ites at their own super bowl — CPAC. He hosted Tucker Carlson in Budapest. He pines on Twitter for Donald Trump’s return.
“Always great to hear from our good friend @realDonaldTrump. Let’s make US-HU relations great again!” Orbán tweeted recently at the Twitter-banished ex-president.
It’s these types of tossed-off comments that no longer pass without a response.
“With Hungary facing economic challenges and Vladimir Putin’s war on its doorstep, the time for a great US-HU relationship? Right now,” Pressman quipped back.
It wasn’t the pair’s first sarcastic Twitter repartee, either. When the Hungarian leader first joined the platform in October and rhetorically asked where Trump was, Pressman also jumped in.
“While you look around for your friend, perhaps another friend to follow: the President of the United States,” he shot back, before offering a sly nod to his critics: “But as the Hungarian media might say: no pressure.”
Such cutting Twitter missives are not to everyone’s liking. Some even insist they are having a boomerang effect, cheapening diplomacy and further deteriorating the U.S.-Hungarian relationship.
Two former Trump-era intelligence officials recently blasted Pressman’s approach in the Wall Street Journal, calling the playful video quiz a “cringe-worthy example of the State Department’s woke virtue signaling.”
“When the U.S. has issues with foreign leaders, it should deal with them through adult diplomacy,” they added. “Instead, our diplomatic efforts under President Biden, a self-styled foreign-policy expert, could be summed up as ‘anyone I don’t like is Putin.’”
The Biden administration batted away any concerns.
When POLITICO asked for comment on the ambassador’s work, the State Department was quick to both express the administration’s “full confidence” in Pressman and to pass along a bipartisan endorsement from Cindy McCain, the widow of Republican stalwart and foreign policy maven John McCain.
McCain, now in Rome as a U.S. diplomat, talked of knowing Pressman for “nearly two decades,” and said he had “earned the deep respect of national security and foreign policy leaders in both the Republican and Democratic parties.”
If there is any overarching goal, it is to call out Russian propaganda, while still paying attention to how Hungary’s government treats minorities at home | Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty images
For his part, Pressman insisted the embassy has no partisan goals and simply wants a better relationship with the Hungarian authorities.
“Our work is not about liberal policies. It’s not about conservative policies,” he said. “But it’s fundamentally about shared core values that are premised upon small ‘d’ democracy, and ensuring that we are able to collaborate together.”
If there is any overarching goal, it is to call out Russian propaganda — while still paying attention to how Hungary’s government treats minorities at home.
“The United States will always engage on behalf of communities that are vulnerable or marginalized, and that are under pressure — and here in Hungary, there are a few of those,” the ambassador said, noting that groups have Washington’s support as “they seek to engage in their own democratic process.”
Principled stances aside, the situation is undeniably strange: A diplomat from an allied country becoming public enemy No. 1 — and the top news story. On a recent Sunday evening, the Fidesz-linked HírTV station spent nearly half an hour on Pressman.
Pressman insisted he doesn’t take it personally. But “do we take it seriously? Absolutely,” he said.
“I’m the representative of the United States of America,” he added. “It’s unusual to find yourself,” he observed with understatement, in “an environment quite like this.”
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea on Sunday vowed a unified, coordinated response to North Korea’s threatening nuclear and ballistic missile programs, with Biden declaring that the three-way partnership is “even more important than it’s ever been” when North Korea is stepping up its provocations.
Biden met separately with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol before all three sat down together on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Cambodia.
The U.S. president began by offering condolences for a crowd surge during Halloween festivities in Seoul that killed more than 150 people, saying the U.S. had grieved with South Korea. The meeting was heavily focused on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s recent escalations, although Biden said the three leaders would also discuss strengthening supply chains and preserving peace across the Taiwan strait, while building on the countries’ support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.
Biden had also planned to seek input from Kishida and Yoon on managing China’s assertive posture in the Pacific region on the eve of his face-to-face with President Xi Jinping.
“We face real challenges, but our countries are more aligned than ever, more prepared to take on those challenges than ever,” Biden said. “So I look forward to deepening the bonds of cooperation between our three countries.”
Both Yoon and Kishida discussed the ongoing displays of aggression by North Korea, which has fired dozens of missiles in recent weeks. The launches include an intercontinental ballistic missile 10 days ago that triggered evacuation alerts in northern Japan, as the allies warn of a looming risk of the isolated country conducting its seventh nuclear test in the coming weeks.
Referring to the crowd surge that occurred in the Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul, Yoon said, through an interpreter: “At a time when South Koreans are grieving in deep sorrow, North Korea pushed ahead with such provocations which lays bare the Kim Jong Un regime’s true inclinations.”
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Saturday that Biden would use the meetings to strengthen the three countries’ joint response to the dangers posed by North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“What we would really like to see is enhanced trilateral security cooperation where the three countries are all coming together,” he said. “That’s acutely true with respect to the DPRK because of the common threat and challenge we all face, but it’s also true, more broadly, about our capacity to work together to enhance overall peace and stability in the region.”
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have skyrocketed in recent months as the North continues its weapons demonstrations and the U.S. and South Korea held stepped-up joint defense exercises. Earlier this month, the South Korean military said two B-1B bombers trained with four U.S. F-16 fighter jets and four South Korean F-35 jets during the last day of “Vigilant Storm” joint air force drills. It was the first time since December 2017 that the bombers were deployed to the Korean Peninsula. The exercise involved a total of roughly 240 warplanes, including advanced F-35 fighter jets from both countries.
North Korea responded with its own display of force, flying large numbers of warplanes inside its territory.
The Biden administration has said it has sent repeated requests to negotiate with North Korea without preconditions on constraining its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, but that Kim Jong Un’s government has not responded.
Biden has said he plans to press Xi to use China’s sway over North Korea to curtail its aggressive behavior, as part of what is expected to be a wide-ranging meeting between the leaders on the margins of the Group of 20 gathering in Bali, Indonesia.
China “has an interest in playing a constructive role in restraining North Korea’s worst tendencies,” Sullivan said Saturday. “Whether they choose to do so or not is, of course, up to them.”
Biden told reporters on Sunday that he’s “always had straightforward discussions” with Xi, and that has prevented either of them from “miscalculations” of their intentions. Their meeting comes weeks after Xi cemented his grip on China’s political system with the conclusion of the Community Party congress in Beijing that gave him a norm-breaking third term as leader.
“His circumstances changed, to state the obvious, at home,” Biden said of Xi. Biden maintained that his own have as well, saying that after Democrats retained control of the Senate in the midterm elections, “I know I’m coming in stronger.”
Underscoring that point, several heads of state approached Biden in Cambodia to tell him they had followed the U.S. midterm campaigns closely, telling the president that the results were a testament to the strength of American democracy, Sullivan told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Indonesia on Sunday evening.
Monday’s meeting will be the first in-person sit-down between the leaders since Biden was elected. U.S. officials have expressed frustration that lower-level Chinese officials have proven unable or unwilling to speak for Xi, and are hoping the face-to-face summit will enable progress on areas of mutual concern — and, even more critically, a shared understanding of each others’ limitations.
“I know him well, he knows me,” Biden said. “We’ve just got to figure out where the red lines are and what are the most important things to each of us, going into the next two years.”
As president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, Beijing’s crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over Russia’s prosecution of its war against Ukraine.
Xi’s government has criticized the Biden administration’s posture toward Taiwan — which Beijing looks eventually to unify with the communist mainland — as undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese president also has suggested that Washington wants to stifle Beijing’s growing clout as it tries to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.
Biden also spoke briefly with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has sought out his own meeting with Xi this week in an effort to ease Chinese sanctions against his country.
—-
Kim reported from Nusa Dua, Indonesia. Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Baltimore and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
SEOUL, South Korea — The leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed Sunday to keep up efforts to resolve their thorny historical disputes as they’re pushing to bolster security cooperation with the United States to better deal with North Korean nuclear threats.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met twice on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Cambodia — with U.S. President Joe Biden and then bilaterally.
In the bilateral meeting, Yoon and Kishida assessed that there has been active communications between their diplomats on “a current issue between the two countries” and agreed to continue consultations to find an early resolution, Yoon’s office said in a statement.
It said the two leaders also agreed to continue their communications.
The statement didn’t elaborate what the issue was, but it apparently referred to a long-running spat over 2018 court rulings in Seoul that ordered two Japanese companies to compensate Koreans who had been mobilized as forced laborers during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The ruling plunged bilateral ties to their lowest point in decades, as the companies and the Japanese government argued that all compensation issues had already been settled under a 1965 treaty that normalized the countries’ relations and refused to comply with the verdicts. The countries later downgraded each other’s trade status and Seoul threatened to abandon an intelligence-sharing deal.
The South Korea-Japan wrangling has complicated U.S. efforts to reinforce a trilateral security alliance with its Asian allies in the face of an increasingly assertive China and an advancing North Korean nuclear program.
South Korean and Japan have been seeking to find ways to resolve the disputes since the May inauguration of Yoon, a conservative who wants to bolter Seoul’s military alliance with the U.S. and improve ties with Japan. Some experts say North Korea’s provocative run of missile tests in recent months has also helped bring Seoul and Tokyo closer together as both are placed within the striking distance of North Korean missiles and feel the need to buttress a security cooperation with the United States.
In their bilateral summit Sunday, Yoon and Kishida renewed their condemnation of the North Korean missile tests that they called “a serious, grave provocation” that undermined regional and international peace. In talks with Biden, the three leaders said in a joint statement that they will work together to strengthen deterrence and ensure all relevant sanctions on North Korea are full enforced. Biden also reiterated that the U.S. commitment to defend Japan and South Korea is “ironclad” and backed by the full range of capabilities, including nuclear.
In September, Yoon and Kishida held their first talks on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly and agreed to accelerate efforts to mend their countries’ ties. That meeting was the first summit between the countries since December 2019.
The scale of the challenges abroad, and the effort to translate 21 months of intensive engagement into tangible results for US alliances, will put the value of that political capital on the international stage to the test even as votes are still being counted.
Biden is set to confront a series of stark challenges in his sit-down with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, critical allies in an Indo-Pacific region rattled by an increasingly belligerent North Korea. An assertive and confrontational China, long a central animating issue for the Biden administration, also looms large.
Biden will also meet with Kishida and Yoon individually before their trilateral meeting.
Biden’s stop at the Asian nations summit comes as advisers see a clear boost from bucking the historical and political trends in the midterm elections. While Biden’s message won’t shift dramatically, the weight behind it is unmistakably more robust after American voters delivered a message that surpassed the hopes of even the most optimistic White House officials.
The trio of world leaders previously met on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in June, pledging to enhance cooperation – a complicated task for the major US allies that have a historically fraught relationship.
But that cooperation is imperative as recent, stepped-up aggression from North Korea will be top of mind for the trio of leaders Sunday. North Korea has conducted missile launches 32 days this year, according to a CNN count of both ballistic and cruise missiles. By contrast, it conducted only four tests in 2020, and eight in 2021.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested Saturday the meeting will not lead to specific deliverables, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that the leaders will “be able to discuss broader security issues in the Indo-Pacific and also, specifically, the threats posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.”
The trilateral comes one day ahead of a high-stakes, one-on-one meeting for Biden with China’s leader Xi Jinping, their first in-person encounter since Biden took office. That meeting will take place on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.
Speaking to reporters Sunday morning, Biden said he was entering the meeting with Xi in a position of relative strength.
“I know I’m coming in stronger,” he said, noting he knew Xi well and there was “very little misunderstanding” between the two leaders.
“We just got to figure out what the red lines are and what the most important things are to each of us going into the next few years,” Biden said.
Biden, Yoon, and Fumio will also discuss Monday’s meeting during the trilateral meeting.
“One thing that President Biden certainly wants to do with our closest allies is preview what he intends to do, and also ask the leaders of (South Korea) and Japan, ‘What would you like me to raise? What do you want me to go in with?’” Sullivan said, adding that it “will be a topic but it will not be the main event of the trilateral.”
Earlier Sunday, Biden will attend the East Asia Summit, building on Saturday’s appearance at the ASEAN Summit aimed at boosting US-Indo-Pacific relations. He then meets with Fumio and Yoon before departing for Bali.
This leg of the trip, a senior administration official told reporters on a call earlier this week, reflects “stepped-up engagement with ASEAN and with Southeast Asia” during the Biden administration.
Biden, the official added, will “lay out our vision for keeping up a pace of enhanced engagement and trying to also address concerns of importance to ASEAN in ways that they are looking for,” keeping with an ongoing theme during the Biden presidency of building alliances in strategic competition with China.
Among the key topics of discussion this weekend in Cambodia, the official said, is the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, where the military seized power in a coup last year.
World leaders will discuss “efforts to promote respect for human rights, rule of law and good governance, the rules-based international order, and also to address the ongoing crisis in Burma.”
Biden arrived in Phnom Penh on Saturday, holding a bilateral meeting with ASEAN chair and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, and attending the ASEAN-US summit.
“This is my third trip, my third summit – second in-person, and it’s testament to the importance the United States places in our relationship with ASEAN and our commitment to ASEAN’s centrality. ASEAN is the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. And we continue to strengthen our commitment to work in lockstep with an empowered, unified ASEAN,” Biden said in brief opening remarks as the summit began.
On Friday, Biden made a three-hour stop in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt, where he attended the COP27 climate summit and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
When Joe Biden and Xi Jinping first got to know each other more than 10 years ago, the US and China had been moving closer for three decades despite their differences.
“The trajectory of the relationship is nothing but positive, and it’s overwhelmingly in the mutual interest of both our countries,” Biden said in 2011 when, as vice president, he visited Beijing to build a personal relationship with China’s then leader-in-waiting.
Seated next to Xi in a Beijing hotel, Biden told a room of Chinese and American business leaders about his “great optimism about the next 30 years” for bilateral relations and praised Xi for being “straightforward.”
“Only friends and equals can serve each other by being straightforward and honest with them,” he said.
On Monday, the two leaders are set to meet each other for another honest exchange in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit. But the mood in the room is unlikely to be as balmy as the surrounding location.
The positivity and optimism of a decade ago has been replaced by mutual suspicion and hostility. When Biden returned to the White House as President, he was handed a US-China relationship in its worst shape in decades, with tensions flaring across trade, technology, geopolitics and ideology.
The upcoming meeting – the first in-person encounter between Biden and Xi since the US President took office – comes at a crucial time for both leaders. Having further consolidated his power at last month’s Communist Party Congress, Xi is heading into the meeting as the strongest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. Biden, meanwhile, arrived in Asia following a better-than-expected performance by his party in the US midterm elections – with the Democrats projected to keep the Senate in a major victory.
The stakes of their much-anticipated encounter are high. In a world reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and the devastation of climate change, the two major powers need to work together more than ever to instill stability – instead of driving deeper tensions along geopolitical fault lines.
But expectations for the meeting are low. Locked in an intensifying great power rivalry, the US and China disagree with each other on just about every major issue, from Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, North Korea, the transfer of technology to the shape of the international system.
Perhaps the only real common ground the two sides share going into the meeting is their limited hopes for what might come out of it.
A senior White House official said Thursday Biden wants to use the talks to “build a floor” for the relationship – in other words, to prevent it from free falling into open conflict. The main objective of the sit-down is not about reaching agreements or deliverables – the two leaders will not release any joint statement afterward – but about gaining a better understanding of each other’s priorities and reducing misconceptions, according to the US official.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan reinforced the message Saturday to reporters aboard Air Force One, noting the meeting is unlikely to result in any major breakthroughs or dramatic shifts in the relationship.
Hopes for a reset with Washington are similarly low in Beijing. Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University, said it would be an “enormous over-expectation” to believe the meeting can lead to any lasting and significant improvement in bilateral ties.
“Given that China and the US are in a state of near-total rivalry and confrontation, there is not much possibility to anticipate that the major issues can be truly clarified,” Shi said.
At the center of their divergence is how the two nations view each other’s motives – and how detrimental these goals are to their own interests.
“The Chinese believe the US goal is to keep China down so we can contain it. And the US believes China’s goal is to make the world safer for authoritarian states, push the US out of Asia and weaken its alliance system,” said Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.
Each side blames the other entirely for the state of the relationship and each believes they are faring better than the other in the situation, said Kennedy, who has recently returned from a weeks-long visit to China – a rare opportunity in recent years due to China’s zero-Covid border restrictions.
“The Chinese think they’re winning, the Americans think they’re winning, and so they’re willing to bear these costs. And they think the other side is very unlikely to make any significant changes,” Kennedy said. “All of those things reduce the likelihood of significant adjustments.”
But experts say the very fact that the two leaders are having a face-to-face conversation is itself a positive development. Keeping dialogue open is crucial for reducing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations, especially when suspicions run deep and tensions run high.
Direct communication is all the more important given Xi has just secured a norm-shattering third term with a tighter grip on power than ever – and a possibility to rule for life. “There is no one else in their system who can really communicate authoritatively other than Xi Jinping,” national security adviser Sullivan said.
On Wednesday, Biden told a news conference that he wants to “lay out what each of our red lines are” when he sits down with Xi, but experts say that might not be as straightforward as it sounds.
“I would love to be a fly on the wall to see that conversation because I don’t think that the US or China has been very precise about what its red lines are. And I also don’t think either has been very clear about what positive rewards the other side would reap from staying within those red lines,” said Kennedy, of CSIS.
For Beijing, no red line is starker or more crucial than its claim over Taiwan – a self-governing democracy the Chinese Communist Party has never controlled. Xi views “reunification” with the island as a key unresolved issue on China’s path toward “great rejuvenation,” a sweeping vision he has vowed to achieve by 2049.
And perhaps no American President has angered Beijing over Taiwan in recent decades more than Biden, who has said – on four separate occasions – the US will defend the island in the event of a Chinese invasion. Each time, his aids have rushed to walk back his remarks and denied any changes in the US’ “One China” policy.
Under the “One China” policy, Washington acknowledges Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never accepted its claim of sovereignty over the island. The US provides Taiwan defensive weapons, but has remained deliberately vague on whether it would intervene militarily if China attacks the island – a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.”
China has repeatedly accused the US of “playing with fire” and hollowing out the “one China” policy. Beijing’s anger reached a boiling point in August, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed aside its stern warnings and landed in Taipei for a high-profile visit.
China responded by launching large scale military exercises around Taiwan that formed an effective blockade; it also halted dialogue with the US in a number of areas, from military, climate change and cross-border crime to drug trafficking.
Now the two leaders are sitting down in the same room – a result of weeks of intensive discussions between the two sides – Taiwan is widely expected to top their agenda. But in a sign of the contentiousness of the issue, barbs have already been traded.
Biden has said he would make no “fundamental concessions” to Xi, and Sullivan has announced plans to brief Taiwan about the talks with an aim to make Taipei feel “secure and comfortable” about US support.
That plan drew immediate condemnation from Beijing. “It is egregious in nature. China is firmly opposed to it,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Friday, shortly after the ministry confirmed that Xi would meet Biden at the G20.
“The problem with China is they don’t like to meet and exchange views – they just repeat talking points. Xi Jinping is not very creative in the way he interacts with his counterparts,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Other key topics on the agenda include Russia’s war in Ukraine – another significant point of tension, as well as areas where the US hopes to cooperate with China – such as North Korea’s ongoing provocations and climate change.
Shi, the Chinese expert at Renmin University, sees little room for breakthroughs on these issues.
“On the issue of Ukraine, China has already made its position clear many times. It will not change simply because of the talks with the US President. On North Korea, since March last year, China has already stopped treating the denuclearization of North Korea as a fundamental element of its Korean Peninsular policy,” he said.
Nor is his assessment for climate cooperation any rosier. “China and the US can find many common interests on this, but when it comes to how to deal with climate change specifically, it always leads to antagonism on policies and rivalry over ideology and global influence,” Shi said.
Experts in the US and China say some progress on greater communication and access between the two countries will already be considered a positive outcome – such as restoring suspended climate and military talks.
“Hopefully the meeting can be used for more than just airing mutual grievances,” said Patricia Kim, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. “For instance, a joint declaration by Biden and Xi that they oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine and on the Korean Peninsula, as well as a nod to restarting working-level exchanges on areas of common interest such as climate change and counter-narcotics would be promising.”
Over the decade of their relationship, Biden and Xi have spent dozens of hours together across the US and China.
During Biden’s getting-to-know-you trip to China in 2011, the two leaders shared a marathon of meetings and meals in Beijing and the southwestern city of Chengdu. They also took a trip deep into the green mountains of Sichuan province to visit a rural high school rebuilt after a deadly earthquake.
The next year, Xi paid a reciprocal visit to the US at the invitation of Biden, who hosted his Chinese counterpart for dinner at his residency after a series of meetings at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon. Biden also flew to Los Angeles to meet Xi on the last leg of his trip.
Their in-person encounters continued after Xi took power in 2012. The last time they met face to face was in 2015, during Xi’s first state visit to the US as China’s top leader.
As relations between their countries plummeted, the once friendly dynamics between the two leaders have also shifted.
Xi is an ideological hardliner who believes in China’s return to the center of the world stage and is skeptical – some would say hostile – toward America. Biden, meanwhile, has grown increasingly weary of China’s authoritarian turn under Xi, and has framed the rivalry between the two countries as a battle between autocracy and democracy.
Last summer, Biden publicly pushed back on being described as an “old friend” of Xi’s.
“Let’s get something straight. We know each other well; we’re not old friends. It’s just pure business,” he said at the time.
Given the growing divide, the two-year gap since their last in-person meeting is an extremely long time, Kennedy pointed out.
“One conversation on the sidelines of a multilateral summit is still insufficient to fully discuss all the key issues that the countries face. And so hopefully, the two sides will facilitate a greater discussion on these issues by many parts of the two governments.”
President Joe Biden underscored the US partnership with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries on Saturday as “the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy” as he seeks to counter China’s growing influence ahead of a high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping set for Monday.
In remarks to the summit, Biden announced “another critical step” toward building on the group’s progress as he detailed the launch of the US-ASEAN Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which, he said, “will tackle the biggest issues of our time, from climate to health security, defend against the significant threats to rule based order and to threats to the rule of law, and to build an Indo-Pacific that’s free and open, stable and prosperous, resilient and secure.” He touted existing US financial commitments to ASEAN as he noted a budget request for $850 million in assistance for Southeast Asia.
“This is my third trip, my third summit – second in person – and it’s testament to the importance the United States places in our relationship with ASEAN and our commitment to ASEAN’s centrality. ASEAN is the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. And we continue to strengthen our commitment to work in lockstep with an empowered, unified ASEAN,” Biden said in brief opening remarks as the summit began.
The president’s first order of business in Cambodia was a bilateral meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as he looks to build on a summit between Biden and ASEAN leaders in Washington earlier this year.
Biden, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One, “was intent on elevating our engagement in the Indo-Pacific” from the start of his presidency, and his attendance at the ASEAN and East Asia summits this weekend will highlight his work so far, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework announced earlier this year and security partnership efforts.
“He’s coming into this set of summits with that record of accomplishment and purpose behind him, and he wants to be able to use the next 36 hours to build on that foundation to take American engagement forward, and also to deliver a series of concrete, practical initiatives,” Sullivan said.
Among those practical initiatives, Sullivan noted, are new ones on maritime cooperation, digital connectivity and economic investment. Biden is set to launch a new maritime domain effort “that focuses on using radio frequencies from commercial satellites to be able to track dark shipping, illegal and unregulated fishing, and also to improve the capacity of the countries of the region to respond to disasters and humanitarian crises,” Sullivan said.
Biden will also highlight a “forward-deployed posture” toward regional defense, Sullivan added, to show that the US is on the front foot in terms of security cooperation.
During his remarks, Biden also pointed to a new US-ASEAN electric vehicle infrastructure initiative.
“We’re gonna work together to develop an integrated electric vehicle ecosystem in Southeast Asia, enabling the region to pursue clean energy, economic development, and ambitious emissions reductions targets,” he said of the initiative.
There will also be a focus on Myanmar and discussions on coordination “to continue to impose costs and raise pressure on the junta,” which seized power from the country’s democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup.
The Japanese and the South Koreans find themselves united in concern about Kim Jong Un’s missile tests, as well as the prospect of a seventh nuclear weapons test. North Korea has ramped up its tests this year, having carried out missile tests on 32 days in 2022, according to a CNN count. That’s compared to just eight in 2021 and four in 2020, with the latest launch coming on Wednesday.
Sullivan suggested the trilateral meeting will not lead to specific deliverables, but rather, enhanced security cooperation amid a range of threats.
The trio of world leaders, Sullivan told reporters, will “be able to discuss broader security issues in the Indo-Pacific and also, specifically, the threats posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.”
Sullivan said Thursday that the administration is concerned about the North Koreans conducting a seventh nuclear test but can’t say if it will come during the weekend of meetings.
“Our concern still remains real. Whether it happens in the next week or not, I can’t say,” Sullivan said earlier this week. “We are also concerned about further potential long-range missile tests in addition to the possibility of a nuclear test. And so, we’ll be watching carefully for both of those.”
But the Monday meeting with Xi in Bali, Indonesia, will undoubtedly hang over the summits in Cambodia, and will be part of those trilateral conversations.
“One thing that President Biden certainly wants to do with our closest allies is preview what he intends to do, and also ask the leaders of (South Korea) and Japan, ‘what would you like me to raise? What do you want me to go in with?’” Sullivan said, adding that it “will be a topic but it will not be the main event of the trilateral.”
Biden and Xi have spoken by phone five times since the president entered the White House. They traveled extensively together, both in China and the United States, when both were serving as their country’s vice president.
Both enter Monday’s meeting on the back of significant political events. Biden fared better than expected in US midterm elections and Xi was elevated to an unprecedented third term by the Chinese Communist Party.
US officials declined to speculate on how the two leaders’ political situations might affect the dynamic of their meeting.
The high-stakes bilateral meeting between Biden and Xi will center on “sharpening” each leader’s understanding of the other’s priorities, Sullivan told reporters.
That includes the issue of Taiwan, which Beijing claims. Biden has vowed in the past to use US military force to defend the island from invasion. The issue is among the most contentious between Biden and Xi.
Biden will also raise the issue of North Korea, with an emphasis on the critical role China can play in managing what is an acute threat to the region, Sullivan said.
Biden has repeatedly raised the issue in his calls with Xi up to this point, but Sullivan underscored the US view that China plays a critical role – and one that should be viewed within its own self-interest.
“If North Korea keeps going down this road, it will simply mean further enhanced American military and security presence in the region,” Sullivan said. “And so (China) has an interest in playing a constructive role in restraining North Korea’s worst tendencies. Whether they choose to do so or not is of course up to them.”
Sullivan said Biden will detail his position on the issue, “which is that North Korea represents a threat not just to the United States, not just to (South Korea) and Japan, but to peace and stability across the entire region.”
Sullivan suggested the meeting will focus on a better understanding of positions on a series of critical issues, but is not likely to result in any major breakthroughs or dramatic shifts in the relationship.
Instead, “it’s about the leaders coming to a better understanding and then tasking their teams” to continue to work through those issues, Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden traveled to Cambodia.
The meeting, set to take place on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, was the result of “several weeks of intensive” discussions between the two sides, Sullivan said, and is viewed by Biden as the start of a series of engagements between the leaders and their teams.
North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile toward waters off its east coast on Wednesday, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The missile was fired at 3:31 p.m. local time from the Sukchon area of South Pyongan province, according to the JCS. It added that the South Korean military has strengthened its surveillance and is closely cooperating with the United States.
Japan’s Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said the missile flew about 250 kilometers (about 155 miles) “at a very low altitude of about 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) or less,” and landed in the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.
He added that authorities are still examining further details like the missile’s orbit, and condemned the launch as threatening “the peace and security of our country, the region and the international community.”
This marks the 32nd day this year that North Korea has carried out a missile test, according to a CNN count. The tally includes both ballistic and cruise missiles.
By contrast, it conducted only four tests in 2020, and eight in 2021.
Wednesday’s launch comes during midterm elections in the United States, with votes still being counted as Democrats and Republicans vie for control over Congress.
Also on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said a missile fired last week was a Soviet-era SA-5 surface-to-air missile – not a short-range ballistic missile, as it had claimed at the time.
On November 2, South Korea said Pyongyang had fired as many as 23 missiles to the east and west of the Korean Peninsula, including the now-identified SA-5, which landed close to South Korean territorial waters for the first time since the division of Korea.
JCS said the missile landed in international waters 167 kilometers (104 miles) northwest of South Korea’s Ulleung island, about 26 kilometers south of the Northern Limit Line – the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, which North Korea does not recognize.
Debris from the missile was salvaged from the sea, and displayed to the press at the Defense Ministry in Seoul on Wednesday.
Tensions in the Korean Peninsula have steadily risen this year, with South Korea and the US responding to Pyongyang’s missile tests by stepping up joint drills and military exercises, as well as their own missile tests.
South Korea is also currently carrying out its own standalone drills in an annual exercise that emphasizes defense operations, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The drills are expected to continue through Thursday.
On Monday, North Korean state media released images purporting to show last week’s missile launches with a warning that what it called the “reckless military hysteria” of the US and its allies was moving the peninsula towards “unstable confrontation.”
Pyongyang’s missiles and air force drills prove its “will to counter the combined air drill of the enemy,” said the report.
The US and international observers have been warning for months that North Korea appears to be preparing for an underground nuclear test, with satellite imagery showing activity at the nuclear test site. Such a test would be the hermit nation’s first in nearly five years.
A pair of dogs gifted by North Korea are the center of a political dispute in South Korea after the country’s former President said he was giving them up over an apparent lack of legal and financial support from his successor to care for the animals.
The two white Pungsan hunting dogs, Gomi and Songgang, were presented to then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at peace talks in 2018.
The dogs have lived with Moon ever since, including after he was succeeded as President by Yoon Suk Yeol in May – even though they are legally owned by the state.
On Monday, Moon’s office said in a statement that he was turning the dogs over to the Presidential Archives, accusing President Yoon of blocking a discussion to provide a legal basis for the former president to keep them.
“Unlike the Presidential Archives and the Ministry of Interior, Presidential Office seems to be against leaving care of the Pungsan dogs to former President Moon,” the statement from Moon’s office said.
“Looking at recent media reports the Presidential Office has no good will for a simple resolution of this issue. Are they hoping to leave the blame to Moon? Or because they feel responsible for these pet animals? We are flabbergasted to see malice of the current administration that is on display at a petty issue as this.”
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety confirmed the government was in talks with Moon to provide monthly subsidies totaling 2.5 million won ($1,800) for the animals.
President Yoon, who already has four dogs and three cats, denied blocking Moon from keeping the dogs in a statement from his office Monday, saying discussions between relevant ministries were ongoing.
“It is not true that former President Moon Jae-in tried to come up with a basis for raising the Pungsan dogs but the presidential office objected,” the statement said.
Dogs have historically been a symbol of thawing ties between the Koreas. In 2000, Kim Jong Il gave two Pungsan puppies – named Uri and Duri – to Kim Dae-jung. The South Korean leader returned the favor with two Jindo dogs named Peace and Reunification.
Seoul, South Korea — North Korea’s military said Monday its recent barrage of missile tests were practices to “mercilessly” strike key South Korean and U.S. targets such as air bases and operation command systems with a variety of missiles that likely included nuclear-capable weapons.
The North’s announcement underscored leader Kim Jong Un’s determination not to back down in the face of his rivals’ push to expand their military exercises. But some experts say Kim also used their drills as an excuse to modernize his nuclear arsenal and increase his leverage in future dealings with Washington and Seoul.
North Korea fired dozens of missiles and flew warplanes toward the sea last week – triggering evacuation alerts in some South Korean and Japanese areas – in protest of massive U.S.-South Korean air force drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal.
U.S. and South Korean officials responded by saying they would further enhance their joint training events and warned the North that the use of nuclear weapons would result in the end of Kim’s regime.
“The recent corresponding military operations by the Korean People’s Army are a clear answer of (North Korea) that the more persistently the enemies’ provocative military moves continue, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the KPA will counter them,” the General Staff of North Korea’s military said in a statement carried by state media.
It said the weapons tests involved ballistic missiles loaded with dispersion warheads and underground infiltration warheads meant to launch strikes on enemy air bases; ground-to-air missiles designed to “annihilate” enemy aircraft at different altitudes and distances; and strategic cruise missiles that fell in international waters about 50 miles off South Korea’s southeastern costal city of Ulsan.
The North’s military said it also carried out an important test of a ballistic missile with a special functional warhead missioned with “paralyzing the operation command system of the enemy.” This could mean a simulation of electromagnetic pulse attacks, but some observers doubt whether North Korea has mastered key technologies to obtain such an attack capability.
Some experts say many other North Korean missiles launched last week were short-range nuclear-capable weapons that place key military targets in South Korea, including U.S. military bases there, within striking range.
Later Monday, South Korea’s military disputed some of the North’s accounts of its missile tests. Spokesperson Kim Jun-rak said South Korea didn’t detect the North’s cruise missile launches and that it’s also notable that North Korea didn’t mention what Seoul assessed as an abnormal flight by an ICBM.
This year’s “Vigilant Storm” air force drills between the United States and South Korea were the largest-ever for the annual fall maneuvers. The drills involved 240 warplanes including advanced F-35 fighter jets from both countries. The allies were initially supposed to run the drills for five days ending on Friday but extended the training by another day in reaction to the North’s missile tests.
On Saturday, the final day of the air force exercises, the United States flew two B-1B supersonic bombers over South Korea in a display of strength against North Korea, the aircraft’s first such flyover since December 2017.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the participation of the B-1Bs in the joint drills demonstrated the allies’ readiness to sternly respond to North Korean provocations and the U.S. commitment to defend its ally with the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear.
After their annual meeting Thursday in Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup issued a joint statement strongly condemning the North’s recent launches and carrying Austin’s warning that any nuclear attacks against the United States or its allies and partners “is unacceptable and will result in the end of the Kim regime.” South Korea’s military has previously warned the North that using its nuclear weapons would put it on a “path of self-destruction.”
Recent North Korean missile tests are pictured in this undated combination photo taken at undisclosed locations and released on November 7, 2022 by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
KCNA via Reuters
Both defense chiefs also agreed on the need to enhance combined exercises and training events to strengthen readiness against North Korean nuclear and missile threats.
Even before the “Vigilant Storm” drills, North Korea test-launched a slew of missiles in what it called simulated nuclear attacks on U.S. and South Korean targets. In September, North Korea also adopted a new law authorizing the preemptive use of its nuclear weapons in a broad range of situations.
South Korean and U.S. officials have steadfastly maintained their drills are defensive in nature and that they have no intentions of invading the North.
U.S. and South Korean militaries have been expanding their regular military drills since the May inauguration of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has promised to take a tougher stance on North Korean provocations. Some of the allies’ drills had been previously downsized or canceled to support now-stalled diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program or to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
For months, South Korean and U.S. officials have said North Korea has completed preparations to conduct its first nuclear test in five years. On Monday, South Korean Unification Minister Kwon Youngse told lawmakers that North Korea could carry out the nuclear test at any time but there were still no signs that such a test explosion was imminent.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea added to its recent barrage of weapons demonstrations by launching four ballistic missiles into the sea on Saturday, as the United States sent two supersonic bombers streaking over South Korea in a dueling display of military might that underscored rising tensions in the region.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the four short-range missiles fired from a western coastal area around noon flew about 130 kilometers (80 miles) toward the country’s western sea.
The North has test-fired more than 30 missiles this week, including an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday that triggered evacuation alerts in northern Japan, and flew large numbers of warplanes inside its territory in an angry reaction to a massive combined aerial exercise between the United States and South Korea.
The South Korean military said two B-1B bombers trained with four U.S. F-16 fighter jets and four South Korean F-35s jets during the last day of the “Vigilant Storm” joint air force drills that wraps up Saturday. It marked the first time since December 2017 that the bombers were deployed to the Korean Peninsula. The exercise involved around 240 warplanes, including advanced F-35 fighter jets from both countries.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry late Friday described the country’s military actions this week as an appropriate response to the exercise, which it called a display of U.S. “military confrontation hysteria.” It said North Korea will respond with the “toughest counteraction” to any attempts by “hostile forces” to infringe on its sovereignty or security interests.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the participation of the B-1Bs in the joint drills demonstrated the allies’ readiness to “sternly respond” to North Korean provocations and the U.S. commitment to defend its ally with the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear.
B-1B flyovers had been a familiar show of force during past periods of tensions with North Korea. The planes last appeared in the region in 2017, during another provocative run in North Korean weapons demonstrations. But the flyovers had been halted in recent years as the United States and South Korea stopped their large-scale exercises to support the former Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea and because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The allies resumed their large-scale training this year after North Korea dialed up its weapons testing to a record pace, exploiting a divide in the U.N. Security Council over Russia’s war on Ukraine as a window to accelerate arms development.
North Korea hates such displays of American military might at close range. The North has continued to describe the B-1B as a “nuclear strategic bomber” although the plane was switched to conventional weaponry in the mid-1990s.
Vigilant Storm had been initially scheduled to end Friday, but the allies decided to extend the training to Saturday in response to a series of North Korean ballistic launches on Thursday, including an ICBM that triggered evacuation alerts and halted trains in northern Japan.
Thursday’s launches came after the North fired more than 20 missiles on Wednesday, the most in a single day. Those launches came after North Korean senior military official Pak Jong Chon issued a veiled threat of a nuclear conflict with the United States and South Korea over their joint drills, which the North says are rehearsals for a potential invasion.
South Korea also on Friday scrambled about 80 military aircraft after tracking about 180 flights by North Korean warplanes inside North Korean territory. The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North Korean warplanes were detected in various areas inland and along the country’s eastern and western coasts, but did not come particularly close to the Koreas’ border. The South Korean military spotted about 180 flight trails from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., but it wasn’t immediately clear how many North Korean planes were involved and whether some may have flown more than once.
In Friday’s statement attributed to an unidentified spokesperson, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the United States and South Korea had created a seriously “unstable atmosphere” in the region with their military exercises. It accused the United States of mobilizing its allies in a campaign using sanctions and military threats to pressure North Korea to unilaterally disarm.
“The sustained provocation is bound to be followed by sustained counteraction,” the statement said.
North Korea has launched dozens of ballistic missiles this year, including multiple ICBMs and an intermediate-range missile flown over Japan. South Korean officials say there are indications North Korea in coming weeks could detonate its first nuclear test device since 2017. Experts say North Korea is attempting to force the United States to accept it as a nuclear power and seeks to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
UNITED NATIONS — The United States and its allies clashed with China and Russia on Friday over North Korea’s escalating ballistic missile launches and American-led military exercises in South Korea, again preventing any action by the deeply divided U.N. Security Council.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said North Korea’s “staggering 59 ballistic missile launches this year,” including 13 since Oct. 27 and one that made an “unprecedented impact” about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from South Korea’s shore, are about more than advancing Pyongyang’s military capabilities and seek to raise tensions and stoke fear in its neighbors.
She said 13 of the 15 Security Council members have condemned North Korea’s actions since the beginning of the year, but Pyongyang has been protected by Russia and China who have “bent over backwards” to justify repeated violations of U.N. sanctions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, the country’s official name.
“And, in turn, they have enabled the DPRK and made a mockery of this council,” she said.
China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun countered that the DPRK missile launches are directly linked to the re-launch of large-scale U.S.-South Korean military exercises after a five-year break, with hundreds of warplanes involved. He also pointed to the U.S. Defense Department’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review which he said envisages the DPRK’s use of nuclear weapons and claims that ending the DPRK regime is one of the strategy’s main goals.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Anna Evstigneeva blamed the significantly worsening situation on the Korean peninsula on “the desire of Washington to force Pyongyang to unilaterally disarm by using sanctions and exerting pressure and force.”
She called the U.S.-South Korean exercises that began on Oct. 31 unprecedented in size, with about 240 military aircraft, and claimed they are “essentially a rehearsal for conducting massive strikes on the territory of the DPRK.”
America’s Thomas-Greenfield responded to claims by China and Russia that the military drills were stoking tensions on the Korean peninsula saying: “This is nothing but a regurgitation of DPRK propaganda.” She said the longstanding defensive military exercises “pose no threat to anyone, let alone the DPRK.”
“In contrast, just last month, the DPRK said its flurry of recent launches were the simulated use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons to `hit and wipe out’ potential U.S. and Republic of Korea targets,” she said. “The DPRK is simply using this as an excuse to continue to advance its unlawful programs.”
The Security Council imposed sanctions after North Korea’s first nuclear test explosion in 2006 and tightened them over the years seeking to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and cut off funding. In May, however, China and Russia blocked a Security Council resolution that would have toughened sanctions over the missile launches, in the first serious rift on the council over the sanctions against North Korea.
That rift remains and appears to have grown deeper, but Russia, China and the United States did agree on one thing: the need for renewed talks and a diplomatic solution to the crisis on the Korean peninsula.
China’s Zun called on the U.S. “to stop unilaterally playing up tensions and confrontation” and respond “to the legitimate and reasonable concerns of the DPRK to create conditions for the resumption of meaningful dialogue.” And he said the Security Council, rather than seeking additional pressure on the DPRK, should contribute “to the restart of dialogue and negotiation and resolving the humanitarian and livelihood difficulties faced by the DPRK.”
Russia’s Evstigneeva said further sanctions would threaten North Korean citizens “with unacceptable social, economic and humanitarian upheavals,” and reiterated the need “for preventive diplomacy and the importance of finding a political diplomatic solution and real steps by Washington, more than just promises to establish substantive dialogue.”
Thomas-Greenfield said even in the face of the DPRK’s escalating missile launches, “the United States remains committed to a diplomatic solution” and has conveyed its request to the DPRK for talks at all levels of the U.S. government.
After the meeting, the 10 elected council members joined in a statement condemning the launches, calling on the DPRK to halt its nuclear and missile programs, and reiterating their commitment to diplomacy and dialogue.
The U.S., Britain, France, South Korea, Japan and others then read a statement calling on all countries to join in condemning North Korea’s “destabilizing behavior and urging the DPRK to abandon its unlawful weapons programs and engage in diplomacy toward denuclearization.”
Before the council meeting, former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told a meeting of Associated Press executives that he is deeply concerned at North Korea’s “unacceptable behavior” and expressed hope that the Security Council would take “very decisive and strong measures.”
North Korea is the only country since the end of World War II that has declared it will use nuclear weapons in a first strike “when they feel that any crisis may be imminent to them,” he said, calling this “arbitrary” and “irresponsible.”
South Korea scrambled 80 warplanes, including stealth fighters, in response to North Korea making about 180 military flights near the countries’ shared border.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
