hankyoreh

White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon

White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, known for his extreme right-wing views and his close association with President Donald Trump, spoke out on the North Korean nuclear and missile threat, saying “there’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it.”

After making the remark in an interview with left-leaning online publication “American Prospect” published on August 16, Bannon said “until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here.” Although Bannon entertained the possibility of a deal with China in which, in exchange for China freezing North Korea’s nuclear development through verifiable inspections, the U.S. would move its troops out of the Korean peninsula, he did not see such a deal as likely.

On the trade disputes with China, provoked by President Trump’s authorization of an inquiry into China’s alleged intellectual property theft, Bannon said “we’re at economic war with China,” and that to him “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”

Bannon, who describes himself as an “economic nationalist,” also said in the interview that “one of us [the U.S. and China] is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path.” And from the perspective of hegemonic competition between the U.S. and China, Bannon also added that “on Korea, they’re just tapping us along” but that [the North Korean issue] is “just a sideshow.”

Bannon believes that an investigation into China’s intellectual property theft and other underhanded practices, such as forced technology transfers from U.S. companies, are just the first steps. He revealed that the follow-up would be complaints on the issue of Chinese steel and aluminum dumping. Bannon, known for his clashes with his White House colleagues, acknowledged the rumors of infighting, saying that he is fighting “every day.”

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]