Antinuclear

The administration followed up that warning on Wednesday morning with a joint military exercise in which United States and South Korean forces fired ballistic missiles in the waters along the Korean Peninsula’s east coast.

But North Korea reaffirmed Wednesday that it would never deviate from its determination to bolster its nuclear and missile abilities as long as the United States’ “hostile policy” and “nuclear threat” persisted.

The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-14, was capable of hitting the “heart of the United States” with “large heavy nuclear warheads.” The launch, according to the agency, successfully tested the functions of the missile’s two propulsive stages and the warhead’s ability to endure the intense heat and vibrations as it entered the earth’s atmosphere……

Acting on an American request, the United Nations Security Council, which has repeatedly penalized North Korea over its violations of a ban on nuclear and missile testing, will meet in an emergency session on Wednesday afternoon.

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, sharply criticized the North Korean launch. “This action is yet another brazen violation of Security Council resolutions and constitutes a dangerous escalation of the situation,” he said in a statement. Mr. Guterres called on North Korea to “cease further provocative actions and comply fully with its international obligations.”…..While the North has made significant progress in its weapons programs, experts believe it cannot make nuclear warheads small enough to be mounted on ICBMs. Still, American policy makers have long seen just the development of an ICBM as a critical threshold the North should not be allowed to cross.

The missile test adds a volatile new element to the Trump administration’s efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, which have included naval drills off the Korean Peninsula and pressure on China, Pyongyang’s longtime ally. In a blunt phone call on Sunday, President Trump warned President Xi Jinping of China that the United States was prepared to act alone against North Korea…….

Mr. Trump is to meet this week with both Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi at a Group of 20 meeting in Germany, and Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the missile test would force them to find some kind of common ground on North Korea. He did not specify what that might be, but he suggested that it would now be harder for Mr. Xi to stand by Pyongyang.

“Certainly the test will change the game,” Professor Cheng said. “The business-as-usual situation is over.”

Other analysts said the launch would put Mr. Trump’s administration in a precarious position, given that it had indicated that such a missile, capable of reaching parts of the United States, was a critical threshold. In January, Mr. Trump declared on Twitter, “It won’t happen!”; the message set off a cascade of speculation on what exactly he meant.

“The important thing is that Donald Trump doesn’t let himself be backed into a corner and that he understands that there are long-term options to contain, constrain and deter the regime,” said Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington……https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/world/asia/north-korea-missile-test-icbm.html