Boris Johnson will today suggest that Donald Trump is right to prepare for war with North Korea.
The Foreign Secretary will praise US secretary of state Rex Tillerson for opening the door to dialogue with Kim Jong-un, even though Mr Trump has said negotiating is a ‘waste of time’.
But Mr Johnson will also defend the US President for keeping military options on the table in order to keep America and its allies safe.
His intervention comes amid concern at what has been seen as inflammatory rhetoric from Mr Trump and Kim, whom the president called ‘Rocket Man’ after a series of missile tests.
Boris Johnson will today suggest that Donald Trump is right to prepare for war with North Korea
Giving a speech at Chatham House in London, Mr Johnson will call for ‘toughness but engagement’ with Pyongyang to de-escalate tensions.
He will say: ‘It is right that Rex Tillerson has specifically opened the door to dialogue. He has tried to give some sensible reassurances to the regime, to enable them to take up this offer.
‘This is the moment for North Korea’s regime to change course. And if they do the world can show it is once again capable of the diplomatic imagination that produced the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and that after 12 years of continuous effort produced the nuclear deal with Iran.’
But he will also stress the need to keep military options on the table, saying: ‘Kim and the world need to understand that when the president of the United States contemplates a regime led by a man who not only threatens to reduce New York to “ashes”, but who stands on the verge of acquiring the power to make good on his threat, I am afraid that the US president – whoever he or she might be – will have an absolute duty to prepare any option to keep safe not only the American people but all those who have sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella.’
He will also warn of the dire consequences of failing to reach a diplomatic solution to the nuclear threat.
‘A new generation has grown up with no memory of the threat of a nuclear winter, and little education in the appalling logic of mutually assured destruction,’ Mr Johnson will say.
Mr Johnson’s intervention comes amid concern at what has been seen as inflammatory rhetoric from Mr Trump and Kim Jong Un (pictured)
‘The memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is now literally fading from living memory. The NPT is one of the great diplomatic achievements of the last century.
‘It has stood the test of time [and] shows an unexpected wisdom on the part of humanity, and almost evolutionary instinct for the survival of the species. It is the job of our generation to preserve that agreement, and British diplomacy will be at the forefront of the endeavour.’
He will also urge Trump to show the ‘far-sightedness’ not to quit the Iran nuclear deal.
Mr Trump decertified the 2015 pact with Iran, complaining his predecessor Barack Obama had been taken advantage of in negotiations, and last week repeated his threat to pull out of the landmark deal entirely.
Mr Johnson will urge Mr Trump to invoke the spirit of the 1970 NPT, which avoided a ‘Gadarene rush to destruction’ by turning the world into a ‘great arena of Mexican stand-offs’.
He will point out the success of the NPT rests on US protection of other nations, which he described as one of the ‘greatest contributions’ from America to the ‘unprecedented epoch of peace and prosperity that we have all been living through’.