US aircraft carrier flotilla heads to North Korea
A potent US Naval force has been diverted from maneuvers with Australia to NE Asia to respond to the threat from North Korea.
The North Koreans tested a new solid fuel based missile in response to the US missile attack on Syria on Friday. The US response shows that even though it is engaged in the middle east, it still has plenty of defence capability in the pacific to deploy.
Of course there are also significant numbers of US troops in bases in South Korea and Japan, and North Korea is unlikely to have forgotten the stabilising alliance that the US maintains following the cease fire that stopped the Korean War.
Neither side ever concluded a war-ending treaty, so the Korean peninsular continues in a technical state of war.
The fact that a young dictator, Kim Jong Un, (who has been proved capable of ordering executions of his closest relatives and top aids by flame-thrower, missiles, poison needles and even eaten alive by wild dogs), is in charge of a state with nuclear weapons means that the Trump Administration needs to tread very carefully indeed.