Here is the latest response by President Trump to critics of his North Korea policy:
President Trump speaks to reporters on the North Lawn of the White House on June 15, 2018. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
President Trump on Tuesday brushed aside questions over whether his assertion that he “solved” the crisis with North Korea was premature amid reports its leader, Kim Jong Un, is trying to conceal parts of its nuclear weapons program.
“Many good conversations with North Korea — it is going well!” Trump tweeted. “In the meantime, no Rocket Launches or Nuclear Testing in 8 months. All of Asia is thrilled. Only the Opposition Party, which includes the Fake News, is complaining.”
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Trump’s brash declaration comes two days before Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to travel to North Korea to meet with Kim — his third trip to the rogue nuclear nation. [Yahoo News]
I think we can take this as a good sign that the Trump administration will not drop sanctions prior to North Korea taking irreversible denuclearization measures:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday extended sanctions on North Korea for a year, citing the “unusual and extraordinary” threat posed by its nuclear weapons program.
The extension comes 10 days after Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, during which the North committed to “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for U.S. security guarantees.
“The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump wrote in a routine notice to Congress.
For this reason, Trump said, six executive orders that were issued under his and past administrations to sanction North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs must continue in effect beyond June 26.
“Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to North Korea declared in Executive Order 13466,” he wrote.
The action appears to underscore the Trump administration’s goal of keeping sanctions on North Korea until it takes concrete steps toward denuclearization. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime must have been expecting this considering how muted their reaction has been so far.
U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim enters the Foreign Ministry in Seoul on June 1, 2018, to meet with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. Sung Kim, a former chief U.S. nuclear envoy, met with North Korean officials at the truce village of Panmunjom over the past few days for talks on North Korea’s denuclearization methods and timelines and ensuring the North’s regime security. The U.S. and North Korean delegations were led by Sung Kim and North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, respectively. (Yonhap)
It appears that President Trump is determined to end the North Korean issue one way or another in his first term as US President according to Senator Lindsey Graham:
This EPA file photo shows U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. (Yonhap)
U.S. President Donald Trump wants to end the North Korean nuclear crisis during his current term, and will likely use military means if diplomacy fails, an American senator said Sunday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made the remark on Fox News, citing his conversation with the president three days earlier.
“He says he’s going to end this conflict within his first term, that every other president has been played,” Graham said. Trump’s term ends in early 2021.
“President Trump told me three days ago that he wants to end this in a win-win way,” the senator continued. “He thinks that’s possible, but if they pull out, they play him, that we’re going to end North Korea’s threat to the American homeland in his first term and I’ll let you surmise as to what that might look like.” [Yonhap]
It will be interesting to hear what the details of this were if they are ever released:
Mike Pompeo
CIA Director Mike Pompeo made a top-secret visit to North Korea over Easter weekend as an envoy for President Trump to meet with that country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, according to two people with direct knowledge of the trip.
The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump’s most trusted emissaries and the authoritarian head of a rogue state was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the highly classified nature of the talks.
The clandestine mission, which has not previously been reported, came soon after Pompeo was nominated to be secretary of state. [Washington Post]
Considering how the Kim regime has received large rewards for little to nothing in return from past nuclear agreements, they have lost all benefit of the doubt from the Trump administration:
Mike Pompeo
The United States will not reward North Korea before the regime “permanently, irreversibly” dismantles its nuclear weapons program, the nominee to be the top U.S. diplomat said Thursday.
Mike Pompeo, the nominee for U.S. secretary of state, told his Senate confirmation hearing that the Trump administration does not plan to repeat the failures of past negotiations that provided Pyongyang with economic aid before its nuclear program was undone.
“It is the intention of the president and the administration not to do that this time to make sure that before we provide rewards, we get the outcome permanently, irreversibly, that it is that we hope to achieve,” said Pompeo, who currently serves as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“It is a tall order, but I am hopeful that President Trump can achieve that through sound diplomacy,” he said. [Korea Times]
Considering John Bolton’s recent comments about North Korea, I think it is pretty clear that President Trump is putting people in position that will support hard measures against the Kim regime if negotiations fail:
John Bolton
When John Bolton talks of war, on the other hand, it’s more explicable. “Question: How do you know that the North Korean regime is lying? Answer: Their lips are moving,” he said on Fox News shortly after news broke that Trump and Kim Jong Un had agreed to participate in direct talks on “denuclearization” by May. The North Koreans aren’t going to voluntarily abandon their goal of obtaining nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, he argued. “They want to buy time: three months, six months, 12 months—whatever it is they need to get across the finish line. What Trump did … is foreshorten that period” by organizing a meeting that can quickly expose North Korea insincerity about relinquishing its nuclear program anytime soon. (“I may leave fast or we may sit down and make the greatest deal for the world,” Trump himself recently predicted.) “Rather than having the low-level negotiations rising to the mid-level negotiations rising to the high-level negotiations, finally rising to a summit meeting—that’ll be two years from now, they’ll have deliverable nuclear weapons,” Bolton explained. “That we cannot allow.” [The Atlantic]
You can read the whole article at the link.
I think President Trump’s quick acceptance and short timeframe for conducting the summit combined with his recent appointments of Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton has to be putting significant pressure on the Kim regime that past delay games are not going to work this time.
In my opinion these are two very good candidates for the position of US ambassador to South Korea. It will be interesting to see who President Trump picks:
Gen. James Thurmond / Congressman Ed Royce
A retired US Army general and the chairman of the US house foreign affairs committee have emerged as candidates to become US President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Seoul.
Retired US Army General James Thurman and outgoing Republican Representative Edward Royce are under consideration for the ambassadorship, two sources with knowledge of the matter told the South China Morning Post.
The pair emerged as candidates after the White House rejected presumptive nominee Victor Cha, a veteran Korean expert and former National Security Council official, because of his unwillingness to endorse a preliminary strike strategy on North Korea.
Thurman, 64, was a member of US Vice President Mike Pence’s delegation to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics held in Pyeongchang, South Korea in early February. His presence was “a pretty good sign he is under consideration [for the ambassadorship],” according to one of the sources. [Korea Times]
