The Army chief of staff had a blunt assessment for Congress about a potential war with North Korea, saying it “would be horrific” and “tragic on an unbelievable scale.”

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army’s 39th chief of staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee a full-blown war on the Korean Peninsula “would be huge and there would be huge amounts of casualties.”

“The levels of violence would be immense and it would be the likes of what the world hasn’t seen since the Second World War,” Milley said.

He was not predicting there would be a war with North Korea over its efforts to produce nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States, but it ranks very high among risks. “We are in a current war against ISIS, and probably the greatest capability out there remains Russia but clearly North Korea is probably the most dangerous close—in terms of time—threat in my view that the United States faces.” 

North Korea is “rapidly developing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon attached that can range the continental United States. I don’t think that we should allow that. I don’t think that is the policy of the nation. I believe the President of the United States when he says that if China doesn’t solve it, the United States will.”