Moderator Andrea Mitchell interviews Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chairman Joseph Dunford on July 22 during the Aspen Security Forum at the Aspen Institute, in Aspen, Colorado. | Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times via AP Photo Dunford: Military option for North Korea not 'unimaginable'

ASPEN, Colorado — Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested Saturday that Americans must be prepared for the possibility of a military confrontation with North Korea, whose nuclear program he deemed an urgent threat.

Although he stressed the importance of applying continued economic and diplomatic pressure aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms program, Dunford dismissed the oft-stated notion that a military option shouldn't be on the table.


"Many people have talked about military options with words like 'unimaginable,'" Dunford said. "I would probably shift that slightly and say it would be horrific, and it would be a loss of life unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes, and I mean anyone who's been alive since World War II has never seen the loss of life that could occur if there's a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

"But as I've told my counterparts, both friend and foe," he added, "it is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability. What's unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado. That's unimaginable to me. So my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn't happen."

Dunford was speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of national security officials, experts and others that wrapped up Saturday. His comments came in the wake of North Korea's testing of an inter-continental ballistic missile earlier this month.

At this stage, Pyongyang does not appear capable of delivering a nuclear weapon on such missiles, but its rapid advancement in the overall weapons systems is deeply worrying to President Donald Trump's administration. Dunford stressed that the United States is already prepared to defend itself and allies such as South Korea and Japan against North Korea's current capability of carrying out a more limited missile attack.

Dunford began chairing the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 2015, under then-President Barack Obama; he is the nation's highest-ranking military officer. Dunford has kept a relatively low profile since Trump took office six months ago, avoiding many of the ugly internal battles that have marked the Republican's tenure. But he is involved in many of the key national security debates gripping the administration.

Among them is how to deal with Russia, which has taken adversarial positions against the United States in Syria and Ukraine and which U.S. intelligence agencies suspect interfered in the 2016 campaign.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trump himself has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Russia played a role in the election that he won. But Dunford, like several other Trump administration officials who have appeared at the Aspen forum this week, said he had no reason to doubt the intelligence community's assessment.

Throughout Saturday's discussion, which was moderated by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, Dunford repeatedly mentioned his support for the work of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has been tackling a range of crises, including corralling more international support to pressure North Korea and trying to repair a diplomatic rift between Qatar and a group of other countries led by Saudi Arabia.

The State Department has been targeted for serious financial cuts under a Trump budget proposal that is meeting stiff resistance in Congress. Dunford insisted that it's important to properly resource America's diplomats.

"I view the Department of Defense clearly in support of the State Department," Dunford said.

There were some light moments during the hour-long session. Asked how he gets along with Trump, Dunford said: "He loves me! At least I think so."

