North Korea Says It Was Practicing to Hit U.S. Bases

“North Korea was practicing to strike United States military bases in Japan with its latest barrage of missiles, state media in Pyongyang reported Tuesday, and it appears to be trying to outsmart a new American antimissile battery being deployed to South Korea by firing multiple rockets at once,” the Washington Post reports.

Kim Jong Un presided over Monday’s launch of the four missiles, “feasting his eyes on the trails of ballistic rockets,” the Korean Central News Agency reported in a statement that analysts called a “brazen declaration” of the country’s intent to strike enemies with a nuclear weapon if it came under attack.

Rick Klein: “Forget Iran or ISIS, or Iraq or Afghanistan, and move over Russia, even. The first national-security crisis of the Trump era is looking like it’s coming from North Korea, which has a history of provoking American administrations at times of perceived advantage. With missile tests moving beyond saber-rattling, the Trump team is deploying a defensive missile system to South Korea (with ramifications in China), and figuring out details of the inherited cyberwar plan revealed this week by the New York Times. This is the kind of moment where a fully operational national-security apparatus is of vital importance. There will hints and signals and hard-to-interpret maneuvers emanating from multiple directions in the coming days. The outside world, so quiet for this first half of Trump’s first 100 days, is waking up.”

New York Times: U.S. missile defense system deployed to North Korea.