North Korea may see no U.S. nuclear threat: adviser

The way North Korea has been treated by the US since Clinton I'm not surprised by North Korea's analysis. Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea may have begun developing nuclear arms after deciding the United States was unlikely to use nuclear weapons to eliminate its development program, a senior Pentagon adviser said on Thursday.

"It probably is today's situation that they have developed the confidence -- perhaps misplaced confidence -- that the United States, if it were to go after their nuclear capability, likely would do so with conventional forces," said former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.

Schlesinger, who heads a Pentagon panel charged with evaluating the U.S. nuclear mission, told reporters that he believes Pyongyang initially saw "a higher probability" that Washington would use its nuclear arsenal to wipe out a nuclear threat from North Korea.

"But as the decades have gone on, and as we have not reacted in the way they might have anticipated to their development of nuclear capabilities, they might have been encouraged to believe that they were reasonably safe from a nuclear response," he said.