The top U.S. military officer told his counterparts in South Korea on Monday that the United States is ready to use the “full range” of its military capabilities to defend itself and its allies from any North Korean provocation.
Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting South Korea, Japan and China after a week in which President Donald Trump traded threats with North Korea. Trump declared the U.S. military “locked and loaded” and said he was ready to unleash “fire and fury” if North Korea continued to threaten the United States.
North Korea, meanwhile, has threatened to lob four intermediate-range missiles into the waters near Guam, a tiny U.S. territory about 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) from Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. This would be a deeply provocative act, from the U.S. perspective, and there has been widespread debate about whether Washington would try
