U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has warned of an “effective and overwhelming” response against North Korea if it chose to use nuclear weapons but has said any military solution would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale.”

The United States has 28,500 troops in South Korea to guard against the North Korean threat. Speaking to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump told reporters that North Korea’s rhetoric and a series of recent ballistic missile tests goes “beyond a normal state” and if it continues will be met with “power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

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But Trump’s big talk isn’t helping to defuse growing nuclear tensions between the two nations say American politicians and experts. Tillerson said Trump was trying to send a strong and clear message to North Korea’s leader so that there wouldn’t be “any miscalculation.”

“What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un can understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language,” Tillerson said. Read more: Trump's North Korea threat is eerily similar to Harry Truman's Hiroshima bombing announcement in 1945

Early this week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged that diplomatic talks are the best way forward.
U.S. President Donald Trump promises "fire and fury like the world has never seen" if North Korea threatens the United States.