North Korea launches missiles at U. S. bases in Japan — while China sanctions South Korea for building up its missile defense.
The Trump administration has stumbled through its first weeks in office — lurching, haphazardly, from one self-created crisis to another. By the first week of March, the president was already consumed by rage ; his staff, by bitter divisions. Relations between the White House and the federal bureaucracy were already soured by mutual distrust; and the administration’s messaging, especially on foreign policy, had become riddled with contradictions.
This is what the Trump presidency looks like when the economy is (relatively) strong, and there is no major foreign or domestic crisis demanding immediate executive action.
Soon, we’ll get to see what the Trump presidency looks like when one of the most vexing problems in American foreign policy reaches its boiling point.
An authoritarian rogue state with nuclear weapons — and the support of the world’s second-greatest power — has been making progress toward an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the coast of California. And this week, it practiced firing barrages of missiles at America’s military bases in Japan.
Ideally, this is where China would step in, and use its considerable economic clout to discipline its wild-eyed buddies in Pyongyang. But instead of sanctioning North Korea for such acts of aggression, Beijing is sanctioning South Korea for taking steps to protect itself against incoming missiles.
