U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued bold proclamations during his visits to Japan and South Korea this week, claiming that “all options are on the
U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued bold proclamations during his visits to Japan and South Korea this week, claiming that “all options are on the table” in dealing with the growing threat from nuclear-armed North Korea.
According to Japanese officials, Tillerson — who railed against the U. S. diplomatic approach to the North over the past 20 years — told both Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday that Washington had ruled nothing out.
On Friday, during a visit to South Korea, Tillerson took his comments even further.
“Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended,” media reports quoted him as saying in reference to the previous administration’s approach to the North. “We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures. All options are on the table.”
He said any North Korean actions that threatened the South would be met with “an appropriate response.”
“If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table,” Tillerson said.
But is the new secretary of state, with no prior experience in government, really ready to offer new strategies on halting the North’s advances?
Experts interviewed by The Japan Times were split over the question.
“I think the Tillerson statement is empty rhetoric. … (It) sounds good, but (there is) nothing there,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
“The general thinking in D. C. is that Tillerson is an empty suit,” he said.
Indeed, some observers now argue Tillerson may have much less influence on the administration of U. S. President Donald Trump than his predecessors at the State Department.
“Tillerson has … been absent for most of Trump’s meetings with visiting leaders. He likewise does not seem to be playing a central role in the few foreign-policy decisions that the Trump administration has made,” Robert Jervis, a professor of international politics at Columbia University in New York, wrote in a March 10 article for Foreign Policy.
“There is no evidence that his advice was sought when Trump huddled with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in January after a North Korean missile launch,” he wrote.
But Tsuneno Watanabe, a senior research fellow at the Sasagawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, said Tillerson at least sent a strong message to the North while visiting Japan — that Washington has yet to rule anything out.
