Start GRASP/Korea The Trump administration sends mixed messages on North Korea

The Trump administration sends mixed messages on North Korea

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With few options and the crisis escalating, the Trump administration struggles with how to deal with a nuclear-armed North Korea
With few good military or diplomatic options and the danger clearly escalating, the Trump administration is struggling with how to confront a nuclear-armed North Korea that suddenly appears capable of hitting California and beyond with a ballistic missile.
As experts study whether Pyongyang’s second intercontinental missile test landed on target in the Sea of Japan, as initial reports indicated, or disintegrated after it reentered the atmosphere late Friday, as some evidence suggests, senior administration officials have given mixed messages about a possible U. S. response.
It’s unclear if the disparate messages — particularly over whether the U. S. seeks the ouster of North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un — represent a deliberate effort to keep Pyongyang off guard as to U. S. intentions, or indicates ambivalence on a major foreign policy issue in a White House battling chaos on several fronts.
President Trump repeatedly insisted this week that he will “handle” North Korea and on Wednesday he signed legislation that will impose more sanctions on Pyongyang. But he has not indicated how he would defuse the mounting threat beyond demanding that China apply more political and economic pressure to rein in its neighbor.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson leaves Thursday for an Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations security conference in Manila. Despite the rising tensions, he will not meet North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, while in the Philippines, officials said Wednesday.
But Tillerson used a news conference Tuesday at the State Department to seemingly speak directly to the leaders in Pyongyang.
“We do not seek a regime change, ” he said. “We do not seek the collapse of the regime. We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula. We do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel, ” the heavily guarded border between North and South Korea.
“And we’ re trying to convey to the North Koreans we are not your enemy, we are not your threat, ” he added. “But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.”
Tillerson described U. S. sanctions on North Korea and efforts to isolate it diplomatically, politically and economically as “peaceful pressure.”
CIA Director Mike Pompeo had suggested a more bellicose approach at a security conference in Colorado last month. He repeatedly called for separating Kim from his nuclear arsenal, saying the North Korean people “would love to see him go.”
„It would be a great thing to denuclearize the peninsula, ” Pompeo said at the Aspen Security Forum on July 21. “But the thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today.

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