Exclusive | Steve Bannon: Forget talk of military solutions to North Korea threat - US must first engage China to rein in Pyongyang
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist tells the Post that the US needs to push ‘one-on-one’ engagement with Beijing to defuse the nuclear crisis
The US should sit down with China before pursuing a discussion with North Korea on how to solve the Korean peninsula’s nuclear crisis, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday.
“In the US, there has been a ratcheting up of rhetoric about military solutions,” Bannon said in an interview. “There have also been people like the Secretary of State and others that are pushing towards potential discussions with North Korea. But I think the first thing we need to push is actually engage China one-on-one on North Korea,” he said.
Known for his far-right nationalist views and hawkish stance on China, the former top aide to US President Donald Trump is in Hong Kong to speak at an investor conference held by CLSA, a subsidiary of China’s largest brokerage, state-backed Citic Securities.
Although Bannon departed the White House four weeks ago amid a high-profile shake-up in the West Wing and has returned to far-right website Breitbart News, he answered some interview questions as if he still is part of Trump’s Washington inner circle.
