HONG KONG — President Donald Trump is finding little support among his Asian allies — both publicly and behind the scenes — as he weighs a military attack on North Korea after unilaterally firing missiles on Syria.
Any attack on Kim Jong Un’s regime — even a limited strike on weapons facilities — risks catastrophic blowback on some of Asia’s biggest economies. It could threaten to trigger a U.S. war with China and leave the capitals of allies South Korea and Japan at risk of destruction, the same calculation that has helped maintain an uneasy peace in North Asia since the Korean War in the 1950s.
“This has the potential to turn into a conflagration that Asia hasn’t seen since the Vietnam war,” said Brian Bridges, a Malaysia-based adjunct professor of Asian politics at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “If anything, his unpredictability makes the situation more risky because the North Koreans aren’t 100 percent sure he won’t attack.”
Trump has sent warships near North Korea and threatened to act alone if necessary to prevent it from gaining the capability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon. The unease has wiped $30 billion from South Korean equity values this week and driven a spike in the nation’s debt risk, as Kim shows signs of conducting another nuclear or ballistic-missile test.
While it’s unclear how much allies’ concerns would influence Trump administration calculations on any strike, Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told reporters in Seoul on Tuesday that the U.S. said it wouldn’t take action without first consulting South Korea. He called speculation that the Korean peninsula would face a crisis this month “groundless.”
South Korea doesn’t support a preemptive strike and is closely coordinating with the Trump administration, according to an Asian government official familiar with North Korean issues who asked not to be identified. Trump must take into consideration the countries affected for any military decision, the official said.
Japan might only support a limited strike that targeted North Korea’s weapon facilities, according to a person with knowledge of the Abe administration’s thinking. In that scenario, the biggest risk Japan sees would be a North Korean attack on U.S. bases in the country, said the person, who asked not to be named while discussing matters of national security.
The most immediate reaction by North Korea to a strike would likely be massive artillery fire on Seoul and its surroundings, which is home to just more than half of South Korea’s 51 million people, according to a report published by Stratfor last year. North Korean artillery installations along the border can be activated faster than air or naval assets and larger ballistic missiles that can target South Korean, Japanese or American bases in the region with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
While residents of Seoul are used to threats from North Korea, the issue has dominated the campaign for a presidential election on May 9. The front-runners, Moon Jae-in and Ahn Cheol-soo, have indicated they would seek talks with North Korea.