The president’s latest tweets question the value of U. S. diplomacy with North Korea.
President Trump’s latest tweets on U. S. diplomacy with North Korea appear not only to undermine Rex Tillerson, his secretary of state, but also the nascent dialogue with Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs.
“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump said Sunday, referring to Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”
One could say the president’s remarks Sunday are an unprecedented undermining of his own secretary of state. Except they are not. Trump has done this before, on several occasions: This summer, as Qatar was accused by its Arab neighbors of, among other things, supporting terrorism, Tillerson urged “Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt to ease the blockade against Qatar” and urged Doha to be “responsive to the concerns of its neighbors.” Moments later, Trump, with Tillerson sitting in the front row, called Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” stunning diplomats.
Tillerson had spent the early part of his tenure assuaging U. S. allies in NATO that the United States was still committed to the Atlantic alliance after Trump referred to the bloc as “obsolete,” and suggested that U. S. military support for its partners in the alliance was conditional upon their military spending. But in a speech to NATO in June, Trump failed to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Article 5, the provision in the alliance’s charter that deals with collective defense. (He later did affirm it.)
On Iran, it looks likely Trump will decline this month to certify the nuclear deal reached between the Islamic republic and the international community. Tillerson and the rest of the U. S. foreign-policy establishment have said the deal isn’t perfect, but Iran is complying with it. (Tillerson has since hardened his position on the deal, seemingly making Trump’s decision all but certain.)
Then, of course, there is North Korea and Sunday’s tweets, the latest in a series of mixed messages from the president and his secretary of state. In August, amid repeated missile tests by North Korea and Trump’s threat to respond with “fire and fury,” Tillerson played up a diplomatic solution, saying “Americans should sleep well at night.
