Trump issues warning to North Korea

America’s nuclear arsenal is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before, said President Donald Trump as  Pyongyang warned of “all-out war” if U.S. attacks.

President Donald Trump followed up his  warning to North Korea against threatening the U.S. with a boast  about the strength of the American nuclear arsenal, although he expressed hope it would not need to be used.

Trump’s Twitter messages about the nuclear arsenal came after North Korea said it was considering plans for a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. That in turn followed Donald Trump’s comments  that any North Korean threat to the U.S. would be met with “fire and fury.”

“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before,” Donald Trump tweeted. “Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!”

The sharp increase in tensions between a country that has one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals and an aspiring nuclear power rattled financial markets and prompted U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to try to play down the rhetoric.

While Mr. Trump said the nuclear arsenal was more powerful than ever before, U.S. officials say it takes decades to actually modernise nuclear weapons, a move already under way under President Barack Obama’s administration, and there are treaties that regulate nuclear expansion. The Trump administration is still conducting a nuclear posture review.