Much like the Bush Administration’s strategy of launching missile defense projects all along Russia’s frontier in Eastern Europe, while publicly insisting they were meant to counter Iranian missiles that didn’t have the range to get there in the first place, the Obama Administration’s fledgling plans to put missile defense systems in eastern Asia is similarly using North Korea as an excuse to surround China.

That was the revelation of a WikiLeaks-released email, which included the contents of a June 2013 speech by Hillary Clinton to the bankers at Goldman Sachs. The speech was “private,” like so many of her speeches to well-connected financial outlets, and during it she said the US had threatened to “ring China with missile defense” if China didn’t help them crack down on North Korea.

During the speech, she added that the US would never accept North Korea having ICBMs able to carry miniaturized nuclear warheads, and that the US would also put more of its fleet into the area around China in response to that threat.

Clinton also said she’d told Chinese officials that the US “has as much a claim to the Pacific as China” because the US had fought so many naval battles over the ocean during World War 2.

The State Department refused to confirm or deny the threats, insisting they don’t comment on “diplomatic discussions,” and would not address anything contained in “alleged leaked documents.”