President Donald Trump's tough rhetoric on North Korea is eliminating space for maneuvering, as it "looks like brinkmanship," former Joint Chiefs of Staffs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said in an interview airing Sunday.
"It looks like clearly he’s, at least, verbally focused very specifically on the military options with the rhetoric that's out there," Mullen told NBC's "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd. "It's almost a fire and brimstone, 'don't make another move or else.'"
He also took issue with Trump's Friday comment that military options are "locked and loaded."
"We've always had military options, and they're very complex, but they can be executed," Mullen told Todd. "It almost seems as if we're leading with those...it unsettles an awful lot of people."
Mullen said he is concerned about the growing tensions between North Korea and the United States, and he's not sure where the matter is going in terms of a peaceful resolution, especially given the rhetoric coming from both Trump and from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
If the tensions result in a military strike, he fears, there is a possibility that there will be "disproportional responses and miscalculations, [and] it can get out control fast."
Mullen said he also believes that the tensions between North Korea and the United States need to be resolved through Beijing, and that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have spoken.
"Whether China actually is able to prioritize this — resolution of this — as a high interest to them, a national interest to them, is, to me, will be a big indicator as to whether or not what's going on is in any way moving in the right direction," said Mullen. "I think it's got to be resolved politically, diplomatically through negotiations to ensure that we don't have a military conflict that could just get out of control."
Meanwhile, Mullen said he hopes the blame game with previous administrations over North Korea will end, as he is not sure that a military option with either Kim or his father would have prevented the development of nuclear weapons.
"We are where we are now, and this needs to be resolved," he said. "There are hundreds of thousands, if not more, lives at stake here, which just absolutely mandates, you know, a peaceful settlement through the negotiations that we talked about earlier. That's what has to happen."
Further, Mullen said he does not believe Kim to be rational, and that unlike his father or grandfather, he's in a "flat-out sprint" to develop nuclear weapons.
I just can't bring myself to the point where we say, “Well, it's okay if this leader has these devastating weapons.”
He told Todd he is not sure that Kim will ever give up his weapons, but if he does use them, "that basically is an act of suicide from him, because we would eliminate him and his regime immediately."
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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