Ashton Carter, former Pentagon chief, on preemptive North Korea strike

The United States should remain positioned to execute a preemptive strike against nuclear weapons facilities in North Korea, despite the fact such an attack would trigger a regional conflict, a former Defense Department chief said Sunday. 

U.S. military options to preempt a nuclear strike by Pyongyang against Washington’s regional allies in the Pacific should remain a part of the Pentagon’s slate of options to curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, former Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.

“We have to protect ourselves. At the same, I think it’s worthwhile to put pressure on China to play this role it’s been unwilling to play,” Mr. Carter said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

“If it comes to the necessity to protect ourselves, we’ve always had all options on the table and I wouldn’t take any off,” Mr. Carter said, adding that he was part of a Defense Department team that drafted strike plans on North Korea’s Yeonpyeong nuclear research facility in 1994.

His comments come after a slew of recent ballistic weapons tests by North Korea, flying in the face of heavy sanctions by Washington and the international community. While all of those recent tests were unsuccessful, the work demonstrated by Pyonyang’s nuclear experts continues to show progress.

But Mr. Carter did warn the Trump White House against the preemptive strike option, saying Sunday it would trigger all out war on the Korean peninsula.

“This is a war that would have an intensity of violence associated with it that we haven’t seen since the last Korean War,” Mr. Carter said. “Seoul is right there on the borders of the DMZ, so even though the outcome is certain, it [would be] a destructive war.”