While officials continue to hype the satellite images of a roof having been repaired at a North Korean rocket testing site, John Bolton has revealed that President Trump is still open to possible talks in the future, saying it is “too soon” to say if that will happen.
This would seem forgiving of Trump, except that the satellite images don’t prove anything related to a test is happening. Moreover, Trump conceded just the day before that he was behind the reports coming out in the first place.
Trump now says he finds it “disappointing” that the roof in question was repaired, and as far as the future of talks he said “we’ll see. We’ll let you know in about a year,” without providing any specifics.
Much of this gives the impression of it being a US negotiating tactic, providing Trump with a justification to be officially angry at North Korea, while continuing to give lip-service to the talks after their recent failure. This way, a temporary lack of progress can be blamed on North Korea.
Unlike in the case of Iran, when it comes to DPRK’s real nukes, the Orange One reaches for his knee-pads.
Putting a new roof on a storage shed is not grounds for breaking off talks, unless Trump is just marking time until Moon Jae-in can make a deal with the North from behind the scenes. Moon and Kim can work with Putin to shut down the North’s only reactor and provide fuel and food in return. That would effectively end the sanctions and make a deal with Trump unnecessary. But, Trump would certainly take credit for it.
That would also completely cut the crazy neocons like Bolton and Pompeo out of the action, not that they wouldn’t just double down and crank up the threat machine like they always do. I wouldn’t put it past them to stage some horrible “incident” to justify a military response, maybe from those B52s and B2s stationed in Guam.