Drop the bluster

AS PRESIDENT Trump has implicitly conceded, his approach to the North Korean nuclear threat is failing. It was all about putting the responsibility on China to force the North to abandon its programme, which has grown increasingly and alarmingly formidable.

Mr Trump was driven to play the blame game after North Korea on Friday tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that, for the first time, appeared capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. It marked the second ICBM launch in 24 days and the kind of technical achievement that American presidents said the United States could not tolerate. Mr Trump, in fact, had insisted in early January that such a missile “won’t happen.”

There is no underestimating the difficult spot in which Mr Trump finds himself.

There is no getting away from the fact that China can and should do more to pressure the North to curb its nuclear programme.

The Trump administration, backed by Congress, has not given up on the idea that China can be forced to help, and is preparing to increase the pressure on Beijing by sanctioning Chinese banks doing business with North Korea. But sanctions alone are not the answer. Mr Trump needs to face the reality that he must intervene directly.

What would such direct intervention entail? For starters, Mr Trump should drop the bluster and dispatch Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Pyongyang to explore whether there is any basis for negotiations. In May, the president raised the possibility of meeting the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, himself “under the right circumstances”.

Are the North Koreans even interested in talks? That can’t be known, however, unless someone goes and asks them.