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  1. #1
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Trump’s zigzagging approach to North Korea veers toward military options

    Trump’s zigzagging approach to North Korea veers toward military options

    By Anne Gearan September 6 at 9:58 PM

    President Trump’s approach to the rapidly rising threat from North Korea has veered from empathy for the country’s bellicose leader to finger-pointing at China to quick-tempered threats of possible military action.

    The administration’s goals and tactics have also shifted, from isolating North Korea to reassuring leader Kim Jong Un that the United States won’t overthrow him to threats of, as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis put it, “annihilation.”

    Before Pyongyang’s sixth and largest nuclear test Sunday, Trump had said U.S. military options were “locked and loaded” should North Korea behave rashly.

    On Wednesday, Trump sounded subdued and statesmanlike.

    “We’re going to see what happens,” Trump said when asked whether he is considering military action against North Korea. “We’ll see what happens. Certainly, that’s not our first choice, but we will see what happens.”

    While Trump has accused his predecessors of not being tough on North Korea, the zigzagging U.S. response and the president’s willingness to talk openly about a military attack could be creating its own set of problems by raising the price of an eventual deal and probably making negotiations impossible for now, Asia security analysts said.

    “Kim Jong Un is not begging for war,” said Daniel Russel, who was the State Department’s top diplomat for Asia until earlier this year. “What he wants is not conflict but some kind of major concession” from the United States and its allies South Korea and Japan.

    Kim, in contrast to Trump, has been relentlessly consistent.

    During Trump’s nearly eight months in office, North Korea’s leader has, as promised, accelerated development of a more powerful nuclear weapon and long-range missiles that could deliver a warhead to U.S. shores. The goal, Asia security specialists said, is to cut off U.S. military options and force the United States and the rest of the world to make concessions.

    “Kim Jong Un has a very scrutable game plan,” said Russel, now a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Leverage his nuclear threat and mon*etize it.”

    That strategy predates Trump, and U.S. officials have complained about a shakedown for years.

    But Trump’s response has been far different from recent administrations’ and, at times, has seemed more off the cuff than the result of deliberative planning.

    He recently mused about cutting off all trade with nations that do business with North Korea, a practical impossibility and a proposal at odds with the U.S. strategy of engaging China and other nations in international economic sanctions against North Korea.

    Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday and told reporters that the 45-minute conversation about North Korea was productive.

    “President Xi would like to do something. We’ll see whether or not he can do it,” Trump said. “But we will not be putting up with what’s happening in North Korea. I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100 percent. He doesn’t want to see what’s happening there, either.”

    On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that if the United Nations does not put additional sanctions on North Korea, he has an executive order ready for Trump to sign that would impose sanctions on any country that trades with Pyongyang, Reuters reported.

    The muddled U.S. message includes offers of diplomacy from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and threats of additional economic sanctions from U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and of a “massive military response” from Mattis.

    Haley told the U.N. Security Council at an emergency session Monday that Kim is “begging for war.”

    Trump had appeared to endorse diplomatic outreach before writing it off as pointless in a Twitter message on Aug. 30.

    “Talking is not the answer!” he wrote then.

    Democrats have criticized Trump’s handling of the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, arguing a more measured approach is needed.

    “The president of the United States needs to be on the phone conducting diplomacy, not these hot and cold tweets,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Tuesday in an interview with MSNBC. “We want to work with China, and we want to get them to put pressure on North Korea. On one hand, he tweets that his best buddy is President Xi, and the next day he tweets something very different.”

    Mattis and Tillerson along with other national security officials briefed lawmakers on North Korea on Wednesday. Democrats who attended the meeting, according to CNN, said they struck a more diplomatic tone than Trump.

    “I feel like we still have two different polices on North Korea: one at the Department of State and Department of Defense, and another on the President’s Twitter feed,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told the network.

    China is the most important partner in making any economic penalties stick. Beijing worked with the United States to approve tough new export bans on North Korea last month, a strong signal of Chinese irritation with a regime it protects but cannot fully control. Beijing has signaled opposition to new penalties, potentially including an oil embargo, that the United States is now seeking through the United Nations.

    “The time has come to exhaust all diplomatic means to end this crisis, and that means quickly enacting the strongest possible measures here in the U.N. Security Council,” Haley said Monday.

    On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders emphasized pressure and military options.

    “Look, we’ve been clear about what our priorities are: that now is not the time for us to spend a lot of time focused on talking with North Korea, but putting all measures of pressure that we can,” she said. “All options are on the table, and we’re going to continue to keep them on the table until we get the results that we’re looking for.”

    It is not clear where Tillerson’s diplomatic overture stands. A week before North Korea’s latest nuclear test, of a hydrogen bomb, Tillerson told “Fox News Sunday” that the United States hoped Kim would take the “different path” that negotiations could offer.

    “We’re going to continue our peaceful pressure campaign as I have described it, working with allies, working with China as well to see if we can bring the regime in Pyongyang to the negotiating table,” Tillerson said in the Aug. 27 interview.

    He has gone so far as to directly address North Korea, and offer assurances that the United States does not plan to invade.

    “We are not your enemy,” he said on Aug. 1.

    Since then, North Korea has twice test-fired missiles and conducted its most powerful nuclear test yet. And at least until Wednesday, Trump had increasingly emphasized military responses.

    He referred only to military advisers and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general, when tweeting about a White House emergency session on North Korea on Sunday.

    “I will be meeting General Kelly, General Mattis and other military leaders at the White House to discuss North Korea,” Trump wrote.

    Mattis later told reporters the session was a “small-group national security meeting” with Trump and Vice President Pence.

    Any threat to the United States or its allies “will be met with a massive military response — a response both effective and overwhelming,” Mattis said Sunday.

    He advised Kim to heed international warnings to stand down, but he did not call for talks or repeat earlier warnings that he sees no military solution to the North Korean problem.

    “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country — namely, North Korea,” Mattis said. “But, as I said, we have many options to do so.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.af7de0ac5ef7
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  2. #2
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    The United States can not tolerate a nuclear North Korea. Period. North Korea has already confessed they have nuclear weapons with the capability of reaching the United States. We are their only target, we are the object of their weapons. This can not be tolerated, at all, on any level.

    No one can stop this, but the United States. Russia could have helped US, but Congress chose to make them an enemy instead of an ally in such things because Hillary lost an election. Everyone seems to think that China can solve this for US. They can not or they already would have years ago. They are a strategic trading partner with North Korea. China doesn't really care if North Korea has nuclear missiles pointed at the US, because China itself has nuclear missiles pointed at the US, the more of that in the region, the merrier from China's perspective. China isn't going to hurt its economy to help US. They're Communists and big leaders in that movement. They plan to tighten up the Communist wing of the world at a big summit coming up and the DPRK, North Korea, is part of that. All the small Communist countries will be secretly loving every day that NK has nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. It's the epitome of the David versus Goliath strategy.

    You could argue Russia has the same philosophy, but they don't. Russia is very similar to the US in so many ways that have been hidden from the Americans for decades. But at this point, there's really nothing Russia can do in North Korea. Trump building a new relationship with Russia for such common interest issues has been shut down by the US Congress.

    So, the bottom-line which should be clear to everyone at this point is there's only one nation to stop North Korea from threatening to attack or attacking the United States and that is the United States and the longer we wait the harder and riskier it will be. No time to waste. Action is needed now.
    Last edited by Judy; 09-07-2017 at 05:00 AM.
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  3. #3
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    Why has NK testing missiles and flexing their strength?

    What has happened that would make them do this?

    Why would tiny NK suddenly decide they want to take on the US?

  4. #4
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by nntrixie View Post
    Why has NK testing missiles and flexing their strength?

    What has happened that would make them do this?

    Why would tiny NK suddenly decide they want to take on the US?
    They want to reunify with South Korea and the US has blocked this since WWII. It's the same thing that happened in Vietnam.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    They want to reunify with South Korea and the US has blocked this since WWII. It's the same thing that happened in Vietnam.
    Not to be argumentative =

    Shouldn't the reunification or not of the two Koreas be up to them?

    What right do we have to oppose or not? If any foreign country should have any influence, shouldn't it be ones in the area?

    Yes, we went in and destroyed Vietnam for years, killed 58K Americans, and destroyed the lives of countless more. I believe the two Vietnam's are united? Isn't that right? They seem to be doing OK.

    What did we accomplish?










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  6. #6
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    It should be up to the two Koreas. It's exactly like Vietnam.
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