Focus on North Korea's Capabilities, Not Its Military Parade
Kevin Rudd on CNN
.@MrKRudd tells @CNN don't focus on optics, but technical progress of North Korea nuclear program. https://t.co/OeLpALlh2m
— ASPI (@AsiaPolicy) April 17, 2017
On April 15, 2017, Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd spoke to CNN about North Korea's nuclear program in the aftermath of its military parade. Saying that the "North Koreans are masters at international political stagecraft," Rudd argued that "we need to understand the fact that the North Koreans have been holding parades for a long time."
That said, he stated that North Korea has become a real threat to the United States as the development of its nuclear and missile capabilities has sped up. He pointed to the fact that "they have done five nuclear tests; they've got a lot of nuclear material to put into bombs; [and] last year or so they've done 37 missile tests." North Korea, Rudd warned, is moving closer to "deployment stage."
Rudd explained that only three countries can bring about a positive change on the Korean peninsula—North Korea itself, the United States, and China. He explained that the Trump Administration's policy is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula by applying military and diplomatic pressure "to induce a stronger set of measures out of Beijing, in order to cause substantive behavior change in Pyongyang." (7 min., 28 sec.)