Trump Shouldn’t ‘Hold Back’ as North Korea Tests Missiles, Expert Advises

Daily Signal Staff / July 30, 2017

President Donald Trump needs to get tougher with North Korea by using existing legal options after the communist regime’s weekend progress in improving its capability to strike the continental U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile, a Heritage Foundation analyst said Sunday night.

That is a better course than to complain about China’s lack of action, as Trump has on Twitter, he said.

“Clearly this is a threat that’s [been] a long time coming,” said Bruce Klingner, Heritage’s senior research fellow on Northeast Asia, during an appearance on CNN.

“The Trump administration complains that China isn’t doing enough, which is correct, but also the Trump administration continues to hold back on fully implementing U.S. law and U.S. targeted financial measures,” Klingner said.

Klingner also criticized as “an extremely poor idea” a reported suggestion to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from one of his best-known predecessors, Henry Kissinger, that the U.S. first should come to an agreement with China about what would follow the collapse of the North Korean regime.

The administrations of both Barack Obama and George W. Bush got nowhere with such talks, he said.

Watch the video for Klingner’s full remarks.

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