General McMaster is not a fan of dropping any sanctions on North Korea:
Herbert R. McMaster, the Donald Trump administration’s second national security adviser from 2017 to 2018, said at a seminar in Washington on Thursday that premature sanctions relief should not be granted to Pyongyang and that doing so would be the “definition of insanity.”
The remark came only days after working-level discussions between the United States and North Korea resumed for the first time in seven months but subsequently fell apart over the course of a day.
McMaster claimed if Washington submitted to the North’s “provocation cycle” with its recurrent weapons tests, it would only enable Pyongyang to engage in “long, drawn-out negotiations, during which the North Koreans try to extort more money and payoffs.”
“And then ultimately what do you get? You get a weak agreement that locks in the status quo as the new normal. And then North Korea breaks that agreement right away,” he added.
Let’s hope that military action is the option of last resort which it appears to currently be considering how much of a chance the Trump administration is giving the Kim regime to change their ways:
H.R. McMaster
In an interview with “Axios on HBO,” McMaster argues North Korea could directly threaten “the United States, China, Japan, the world” with its nuclear arsenal and could also engage in “nuclear blackmail.” “This regime could say [if U.S. forces] don’t go off the Korean peninsula, we’re going to threaten the use of nuclear weapons, for example.” McMaster also raises the prospect of North Korea selling its nuclear secrets, or even weapons, noting Pyongyang “was developing a nuclear weapons program for the Assad regime in Syria.” He also points to the risk of wider nuclear proliferation in Japan, South Korea and beyond, asking: “If North Korea gets a weapon, who doesn’t?” Between the lines: North Korea already has a nuclear arsenal, and many experts doubt that leader Kim Jong-un will ever give it up. McMaster says the U.S. needs to “prepare for at least the option of the use of military force” to convince Kim to denuclearize. The Trump administration has sidelined the so-called “bloody nose strategy,” though, and the president speaks warmly of Kim and his intentions.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Tuesday the purpose of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Year address was to “try to drive a wedge” between Seoul and Washington.
That assessment of Kim’s 40-minute speech was in stark contrast to that of the Blue House. President Moon Jae-in’s Spokesman Park Soo-hyun said Monday his office “welcomed” Kim’s overture about sending a delegation to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, set to kick off next month in Gangwon.
Park made no mention of Kim’s threatening the United States with a nuclear attack in the address.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said Tuesday in New York that her country is “not going to recognize” or “acknowledge” any talks other countries have with the North unless the regime agrees to foreswear its nuclear weapons program.
Asked by Greta Van Susteren, a contributor for the Voice of America (VOA), about Kim’s Olympic gesture to South Korea, McMaster replied: “Anybody who thought that the speech was reassuring was drinking too much champagne over the holidays…..he is building a hair-trigger nuclear force that can place the world at risk.”
McMaster continued that it was “pretty clear” Kim was trying to separate Seoul and Washington, but, “Of course, that’s not going [to] happen. His provocative actions, what he’s been doing, is driving our alliances closer together.”
The security adviser explained that the “only reason” why North Korea was developing weapons was to “coerce or blackmail or extort the United States to leave the peninsula and Northeast Asia.”
Beyond that, he continued, it wants to unify the two Koreas under its own “failed system.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but there is a false belief that North Korea is solely pursuing nuclear weapons for regime survival when the regime has survived just fine for decades with the threat of a massive artillery strike on Seoul. It is very arguable that the ultimate goal of the North’s nuclear weapons program is to co-opt the ROK into a confederation on North Korean terms.
I tend to think that Kim Jong-un is probably sleeping very well considering he is nearing his strategic goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon with a reliable delivery system. Once this goal is achieved he pretty much guarantees himself the ability to prevent outside regime change. Additionally the whole world is not against North Korea, they have enough partners internationally that they continue to bring in enough revenue and components to advance their nuclear and weapons programs:
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
McMaster told MSNBC in an interview, “I think he should not be [sleeping well] because he has the whole world against him… He’s isolated on this.”
He described North Korea’s missiles as a “grave threat” but declined to confirm that the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile the North tested recently can reach New York. “I’m not going to confirm it,” McMaster said. “But as I mentioned, really, whether it could reach San Francisco or Pittsburgh or Washington — how much does that matter, right? It’s a grave threat.”
He added it is intolerable for North Korea have nuclear weapons that could threaten the U.S., and all options including a military option should be on the table.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters the previous day that the U.S. is willing to hold talks with the regime and added, “We do not seek regime change.”
But in an interview with the Wall Street Journal the same day, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence ruled out direct talks. The U.S.’ strategy doesn’t involve “engaging North Korea directly,” he said.
The shambolic Trump administration has frequently made it difficult to discern any clear line in the fog of obfuscation and braggadocio that emerges from it.
McMaster, an Army lieutenant general, is seen by some in the U.S. mainstream media as the most rational in the national security team and is thought to stand his ground against President Donald Trump if necessary. [Chosun Ilbo]
By the way the past week has had a lot of White House intrigue involving H.R. McMaster. Factions in the White House are unhappy that McMaster has been cleaning house in the National Security Council. He even fired a staffer named Ezra Cohen-Watnick that an article last month in the Atlantic proclaimed him as, ‘The Man McMaster Couldn’t Fire.’
It looks like the honeymoon for Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster is over if the media is to be believed:
McMaster’s allies and adversaries inside the White House tell me that Trump is disillusioned with him. This professional military officer has failed to read the president — by not giving him a chance to ask questions during briefings, at times even lecturing Trump.
Presented with the evidence of this buyer’s remorse, the White House on Sunday evening issued a statement from Trump: “I couldn’t be happier with H.R. He’s doing a terrific job.”
Other White House officials however tell me this is not the sentiment the president has expressed recently in private. Trump was livid, according to three White House officials, after reading in the Wall Street Journal that McMaster had called his South Korean counterpart to assure him that the president’s threat to make that country pay for a new missile defense system was not official policy. These officials say Trump screamed at McMaster on a phone call, accusing him of undercutting efforts to get South Korea to pay its fair share. [Bloomberg]
You can read more at the link, but who knows what the real story is when this is all sourced from anonymous leaks from officials in the White House probably eager to undercut General McMaster’s influence with President Trump.
As I figured the statement made by President Trump in regards to South Korea paying for THAAD is related to upcoming US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:
H.R. McMaster
National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster said Sunday that the U.S. will indeed pay for the roughly $1 billion THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, amid neighboring North Korea’s repeated ballistic test launches.
“What I told our South Korean counterpart is until any renegotiation, that the deals in place, we’ll adhere to our word,” McMaster told “Fox News Sunday.”
He spoke days after President Trump said South Korea should pay for the anti-missile system and hours after Seoul said that McMaster had assured its chief national security officer, Kim Kwan-jin, about the deal.
“The last thing I would ever do is contradict the president of the United States,” McMaster also told Fox News. “And that’s not what it was. What the president has asked us to do, is to look across all of our alliances and to have appropriate burden sharing-responsibility sharing. We’re looking at that with our great ally South Korea, we’re looking at that with NATO.” [Fox News]
Here is some more signaling from the Trump administration to North Korea that the US is ready to react in response to any near term provocation:
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said Sunday that President Donald Trump has ordered him to prepare “a full range of options” to the nuclear and missile threats North Korea poses to the U.S. and its allies.
McMaster also said on “Fox News Sunday” that it was a “prudent” decision to send the San Diego-based USS Carl Vinson strike group toward the Korean Peninsula, a move designed to warn Pyongyang against additional provocations.
“North Korea has been engaged in a pattern of provocative behavior. This is a rogue regime that is now a nuclear capable regime, and (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) and President Trump agreed that that is unacceptable, that what must happen is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” McMaster said.
“And so, the president has asked us to be prepared to give him a full range of options to remove that threat to the American people and to our allies and partners in the region,” he said. [Yonhap]
It will be interesting to see what North Korea does?
It seems for them strategically it would makes sense to wait a few months let the current tensions to blow over and have US attention focused else where before committing another provocation. Right now they have the focus of the Trump administration focused on them very closely which may mean a forceful response to any provocation they commit.
