Weekly Update --- Who to Believe on Washington’s Korea Policy, Tillerson or Trump?
Secretary of State Tillerson said we should talk to North Korea, then the White House said it's a waste of time, then Tillerson agreed. What's going on?
Secretary of State Tillerson said we should talk to North Korea, then the White House said it's a waste of time, then Tillerson agreed. What's going on?
Secretary of State Tillerson said we should talk to North Korea, then the White House said it's a waste of time, then Tillerson agreed. What's going on?
Hello everybody, thank you for tuning in to the weekly report.
President Trump has often said that his foreign policy objective was to keep his enemies guessing.
If that's the goal, you could say that he's doing a good job.
The problem is, who does he think his enemies are because the American people are often left guessing as well?
U.S. policy toward North Korea last week is a good example of how the Trump administration is wittingly or unwittingly sowing confusion among friend and foe alike.
In what looked like a breakthrough, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced last Tuesday that the U.S. would be willing to sit down and talk with North Korea without preconditions.
Previously, the U.S. had demanded that North Korea agree to end its nuclear weapons and missiles program before Washington was willing to sit down to formal talks.
The State Department's shift toward actual diplomacy with North Korea was quickly squashed, however, when the White House announced that its position on North Korea had not changed.
It seemed that the State Department and White House were each pursuing different foreign policies on the Korea issue.
The White House even appeared to belittle Tillerson's attempt at diplomacy, releasing a statement on Wednesday that talks with North Korea would be pointless.
No wonder speculation persists that Tillerson is on his way out as Secretary of State.
Then, on Friday, Secretary Tillerson seemed to be doing a U-turn on his own policy, announcing at a U.N. Security Council meeting that a sustained cessation of North Korea's threatening behavior must precede any negotiations with the United States.
North Korea must earn its way back to the table, he said.
So after just three days, the offer of unconditioned talks with North Korea had been put on and then removed from the table.
There is more than a little hypocrisy in U.S. demands that North Korea cease its threatening behavior.
Just this month, the U.S. and South Korea launched yet another joint military exercise targeting North Korea.
Some 12,000 military personnel and 230 aircraft, including stealth fighters, participated in the massive war games.
Does anyone think this is not meant to be threatening to North Korea?
It's a shame that the Hawks in the administration continue to dominate.
It seems pretty responsible to open talks with North Korea after a period of good faith gestures between Washington and Poign.
Why not agree on no U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises for six months in exchange for no North Korean missile launches for the same period and then agree to a meeting on neutral ground?
How could it possibly hurt, particularly considering the alternative?
The Hawks continued to talk up a U.S. strike against North Korea.
Senator Lindsey Graham seemed pleased when he announced that there was a 70% chance that the U.S. would attack North Korea if it detonated another nuclear weapon.
Does he realize how many people will die?
Does he care?
Defense Secretary James Mattis seems skeptical about neocon hysteria, declaring that the North Korean missile program does not pose a capable threat to the United States.
With that in mind, we can only hope that President Trump will encourage Tillerson to do another about face and return to the idea of talks without preconditions.