UNITED NATIONS (Dispatches) -- U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his standoff with North Korea over its nuclear challenge Tuesday, threatening to "totally destroy” the country of 26 million people if its "rocket man” leader does not abandon his drive toward nuclear weapons.
In a hard-edged speech to the UN General Assembly, Trump offered a grim portrait of a world in peril, adopted a confrontational approach to solving global challenges and gave an unabashed defense of U.S. sovereignty.
"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump told the 193-member world body.
Trump described Kim Jong-Un in an acid tone: "Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.”
His remarks rattled world leaders gathered in the green-marbled UN General Assembly hall, where minutes earlier UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for statesmanship, saying: "We must not sleepwalk our way into war.”
Trump’s most direct military threat to attack North Korea, in his debut appearance at the General Assembly, was his latest expression of concern about Pyongyang’s repeated launching of ballistic missiles over Japan and nuclear tests.
"It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom later told the BBC.
Many international newspapers also hit out at Trump’s belligerent rhetoric.
"Trump makes things worse by needlessly boasting of American military might,” the San Francisco Chronic wrtoe.
Near the start of his UN speech, Trump reminded the world that the U.S. Senate just approved $700 billion in additional military spending. "Our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been,” he exclaimed.
"You shouldn’t be talking about destroying a nation,” Scott Sagan, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation said. And "why is he using this term ‘rocket man?’ Sort of a bully’s way of diminishing your adversary.”
The effect? Rather than deter Kim, Sagan said, Trump has "created increased incentives for North Korea to get even greater military capability.”