Brendan Smialowski | AFP |Getty Images
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive for a meeting in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018.
Trump’s speech at the Pentagon marked his first public comments since four American troops were killed in northern Syria in a suicide bombing for which the radical militant group ISIS took responsibility.
The president also took time at the beginning of his remarks to address the ongoing clash over border security funding that has resulted in the longest government shutdown on record.
“We need strong borders. We need strong barriers and walls. Nothing else is going to work,” Trump said.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Vice President Mike Pence both stressed the need to enhance America’s missile defense systems in remarks preceding Trump.
“Our nation does not seek adversaries, but we will not ignore them either,” Shanahan said.
The report delves into new technologies being developed by a number of the world’s biggest military regimes. A summary of the document notes that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s missile systems have given the isolated state “the capability to strike U.S. territories, including Guam, U.S. forces abroad, and allies in the Pacific Ocean.”
In 2017, North Korea launched its first-ever intercontinental ballistic missile and threatened to send more missiles into the waters near Guam. Since 2011, Kim has fired more than 90 missiles and conducted four nuclear weapons tests, which is more than what his father, Kim Jong Il, and grandfather, Kim Il Sung, launched over a period of 27 years.
While Trump has worked to thaw relations with Kim over the last year, including through an unprecedented face-to-face meeting in Singapore, North Korea is reportedly still working on new missile development projects. As it stands, North Korea remains the only nation to test nuclear weapons in this century.
In his remarks, Trump congratulated himself for progress he says is being made in Iran, another country identified in the report as an evolving threat.
“What we’ve done to Iran since I’ve become president is rather miraculous,” Trump said. “I ended the horrible, weak Iran nuclear deal and I will tell you Iran is a much different country today than it was two years ago. It’s not the same and it won’t be the same and I do believe they want to talk.”
from Update News Zone http://bit.ly/2FEdNJ6
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