US President Donald Trump has upped-the-ante in the war of words between Washington and North Korea.
He's threatening Kim Jong Un with American "fire and fury" unless the North Korean regime steps back from the nuclear brink.
The President's comments have raised possibility that the US may take unilateral military action in a bid to reverse the progress North Korea has been making developing a military nuclear capability.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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The words were astonishing….and if you saw them written down on a piece of paper, you might have thought they were uttered by Kim Jong Un, not President Trump.
But interrupting what he insists is a "working" holiday in New Jersey, the President issued a stark warning to North Korea: back off, or prepare to face the consequences.
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Quite what the President means by that is unclear: The world, after all, witnessed two nuclear strikes by the United States on Japan at the end of the Second World War….not to mention the kind of scorched-earth warfare that pockmarked Vietnam….Bosnia…and more recently Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the President's comments, even if they were hyperbole, were the first indication that he is serious about the possibility of taking military action against North Korea….even though his own Sectetary of State, Rex Tillerson, said last week that America's options there are "limited", and do not include the deployment of force north of the 38th parallel.
But other voices here…..perhaps even voices President Trump is hearing….take a different view.
Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters is a military analyst on the President's favorite television channel, Fox News.
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Those comments, and the Preisdent's,. came amid reports that North Korea has now miniaturized a nuclear warhead that could, theoretically, be mounted on missiles that could, in turn theoretically reach US shores.
But there are voices here urging calm….and some of them belong prominent Republicans.
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That's Senator John McCain….who told KTAR Radio in his home state of Arizona that he thinks…as they say in Arizona….that President Trump's comments were all hat and no cattle.
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But there's no denying that the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang has at least entered a new, deeply unstable phase.
Two world leaders….Donald Trump and Kim Jongh Un…each of them of deeply unpredictable…each of them apparently relishing confrontation…..and possibly each of them now with their fingers on a nuclear button.
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