Kim ignores U.S. ‘good cop, bad cop’
Tillerson’s tact, Trump’s threats don’t seem to faze North Korea
Washington — If President Donald Trump and his top diplomat are playing “good cop, bad cop” with North Korea, it doesn’t appear to be working: Entreaties of diplomacy aren’t yielding meaningful talks, and military threats aren’t scaring Pyongyang into halting its nuclear advance.
Instead, America’s mixed messaging may be increasing the risk of miscalculation by the isolated, communist government, which lacks insight into the Trump administration’s thinking and could mistake brinkmanship for an overt threat of war.
Although American military action could invite devastating consequences for its South Korean ally, Trump has threatened to use military options and offered sometimes apocalyptic visions of the North unless it ends its nuclear and missile testing. North Korea has launched intercontinental ballistic missiles that can potentially strike the U.S. mainland and a month ago conducted its largest ever underground nuclear explosion. It has threatened to explode another nuclear bomb above the Pacific.
Amid all the threats, however, some level of U.S.-North Korean diplomacy has survived.
Speaking last weekend in China, which wants Washington to resume a full dialogue with Pyongyang, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fueled speculation of a new diplomatic effort, acknowledging open channels of communications between the two countries. Hours later, Trump chimed in. “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump tweeted Sunday, once again deploying his pet name for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”
The jarring tweet fueled a narrative that Trump was undermining his chief interlocutor with the world. But officials close to Tillerson insisted that the pair were on the same page, and that Trump was merely sending a message to North Korea that it would have to show up in serious negotiating mood to any diplomatic talks.
Whatever the intent, confusion was the result.
And on Monday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders compounded the impression that the White House views diplomacy as a dead end.
The only conversations the U.S. is willing to have with North Korea are about the fate of the three Americans being held there, she said. Back-channel talks in the spring led to the release of college student Otto Warmbier, who returned home with brain damage and died days later.
“Beyond that there will be no conversations with North Korea at this time,” Sanders said.