Leon Panetta, who also served as CIA director under the Obama administration, has called on Donald Trump to increase a military presence around North Korea in a bid to thwart the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong-un.
He said: “There’s no easy military solution here.
“Any military solution involves a serious risk that hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost and perhaps a nuclear war would break out on the Korean peninsula and in the world.
“So, I think the key right now is to lower the volume of rhetoric going back and forth and focus on tightening the noose around North Korea.
“Building up our military presence there; building up the security of South Korea, Japan and others; developing a strong missile shield that can protect us from any use of missiles and also tightening these sanctions.”
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Mr Panetta, who also served as the White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, warned Trump about his planned visit to the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) during his tour of Asia next month.
He said: “You know, this situation is tense enough and that tension doesn’t need to be heightened.”
When pressed on why Trump should avoid a visit to the DMZ, a trip that has been made by past presidents, Mr Panetta claimed that the current global tension is to blame.
He stated: “Well, past Presidents have done this, but you’ll admit that most of them have done it when the tensions have not been as high as they are today.
“So, I’m just asking the president to take your time, talk to the key people, get their advice before you decide to do it.”
The war of words between the isolationist kingdom and the US has been upped another gear with the former recently announcing plans for a huge nuclear test.
A senior diplomat from Pyongyang yesterday said warnings of a possible atmospheric nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean should be taken “literally”.
The official told CNN the threat by the hermit state’s despotic leader should not be taken lightly.
Ri Yong Pil said the foreign ministry was aware of plans for a launch and urged Washington to prepare itself.
He said: “The foreign minister is very well aware of the intentions of our supreme leader, so I think you should take his words literally.”
Last month North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said Pyongyang was considering “the most powerful detonation” of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
Mr Panetta’s calls for an increased military presence in the hermit kingdom come as it was recently warned that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could wipe out 90 per cent of the US population.
A new congressional report stated that an EMP attack would decimate America by targeting a key pillar of infrastructure, technology.
Peter Vincent Pry, a nuclear strategist and formerly of the CIA, said: “The US can sustain a population of 320million people only because of modern technology.
“An EMP that blacks-out the electric grid for a year would decimate the critical infrastructure necessary to support such a large population.”
Mr Pry stated that up to 90 per cent of the US population could be wiped out thanks to starvation, disease and societal collapse.