To hear pretty much any US official talk these days, the impression is that a nuclear war with North Korea could break out at any moment. Not necessarily today, as CIA Director Mike Pompeo assured, but soon.
There’s no sign the US military has that impression, however. US warships sit idle at Yokosuka. Officials say the US military is in a state of high readiness, but there’s no sign that anything really changed from the posture they’re always on.
Sources familiar with the situation in the Pacific are saying as much, insisting that the situation is being driven more or less exclusively by “DC rhetoric” and not the reality on the ground. Military forces in the Pacific are largely just sitting there, waiting for things to either work out, or not work out.
One US official, not named in the report, was quoted as saying everything is relatively calm in the region,and that the real concern is that a series of diplomatic miscues could lead the US to “stumble into a conflict” without intending to.