Continuing to ratchet up the rhetoric on North Korea, President Trump once again disavowed assurances from his cabinet that the goal is a diplomatic solution, declaring today that “talking is not the answer” and claiming the US has been “paying them extortion money for 25 years.”
Trump did not elaborate on this claim, and that fueled considerable speculation about what exactly this “extortion money” was. The best guess seems to be that he was referring to humanitarian food aid the US has intermittently provided to North Korea in the past.
Either way, the more significant part is that President Trump, for the umpteenth time since taking office, has rejected the idea of talking with North Korea, a narrative which combined with his constant threats to attack North Korea has fueled major concern of an imminent war.
It’s also undercut the rest of his cabinet. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking Sunday, described the US strategy on North Korea as exerting “peaceful pressure” to try to get them to the negotiating table. Secretary of Defense James Mattis insisted today that the US is “never out of diplomatic solutions” and still discussing possible avenues to make a deal.
While Trump’s comments aren’t in keeping with his cabinet’s, they at the very least seem more honest on his administration’s approach to North Korea, as repeated efforts by China and South Korea to get the US to the negotiating table have been dismissed out of hand, and proposals that would see North Korea scrapping their nuclear and missile testing programs for a drawdown in the US military buildup along their southern border was spurned as unacceptable from the US perspective because it involved them having to make any concessions at all to get much larger concessions from the North.
Far from exploring myriad diplomatic options, the US seems to be betting the house on either managing to somehow convince North Korea to unilaterally disarm amid US threats to attack, or see tensions continue to skyrocket until a disastrous war results.
No, 30,000 incinerated US soldiers and permanent war for permanent profits IS the answer….right??? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Nothing more to say.The man is an idiot.
Someone should send Dennis Rodman to Mar-a-Lago instead of Pyongyang. Say what you will about the dude but he appears to be the lunatic whisperer and Trump is the one creep who has Kim beat in that department.
Nothing works with Kim. He wants nukes and he wants to antagonize
with missiles and threats, but Antiwar.com editors constantly defend his actions. Antiwar.com editors see nothing wrong with his actions.
Antiwar.com is right. Every single reckless action taken by North Korea has been a near mirror image of an American act of provocation. If your looking for an excuse for Donald Trump’s betrayal of your values look elsewhere. Better yet, don’t look at all. There is no excuse. Starting a Second Korean War is not putting America first.
The next time I see an Antiwar.com editor defending Kim will be the first time I see an Antiwar.com editor defending Kim. Noticing that most of the US propaganda is propaganda isn’t “defending Kim.”
North Koreans could use a little “US propaganda” right about now.
We know Trump knew nothing about NK before becoming president. So who’s schooling him and why aren’t they all on the same page per Tillerson, Mattis, etc? So much confusion with this administration’s foreign policy.
Maybe we could get them to the table and get a deal like the one with Iran. I’m sure they would have no problem trusting us considering how Trump is treating that deal. Just because we actually negotiated that deal, instead of our usual demand of total capitulation beforehand, didn’t mean we’d actually honor it. North Korea might be the ones saying “talking isn’t the answer”.
Told everyone not to believe the “tensions are easing” nonsense from last week. As I’ve said before, too many “pundits” spend too much time parsing every little sentence in the news cycle. That’s not how world events work.
The fundamentals of the situation haven’t changed – and won’t change as long as the US resorts to bullying and war as its first response to everything.
How about if we “heap coals of fire at their feet”? We could remove the sanctions that cripple the North Korean economy and stop our war games along their border. It would’t cost us a thing. In fact we could save money.