© The Presidential Blue House / Yonhap / Reuters
Kim Jong Un poses for photographs with the South Korean delegation in Pyongyang, North Korea, on March 6.
President Trump has threatened to "
totally destroy North Korea," respond with "
fire and fury" to its nuclear weapons, and said "they're going to be in trouble like few nations ever have been in trouble in this world." His remarks have caused commentators,
including at The Atlantic, to worry that Trump could essentially
taunt Kim Jong Un into a war. And then, suddenly, South Korea said Tuesday that the North was open to talks with the U.S., including on renouncing its nuclear weapons program -
something Kim Jong Un had never put on the table before. Could that mean that Trump's blustery rhetoric ... worked?
Not all the words from Washington have been bellicose, of course.
Sometimes the administration has managed to seem both threatening and conciliatory on the same day. Trump has warned Kim about the
size of his nuclear button. Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state,
has said the U.S. is ready for talks with no conditions. James Mattis, the U.S. defense secretary, has said all options are on the table, which presumably includes war as well as talking. Sometimes the administration has appeared to reverse itself within hours - as when Tillerson
said last October that the United States has "three channels open to Pyongyang." Not long after, Trump tweeted: "I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"
But R.C. Hammond, who served as senior adviser to Tillerson for public affairs until last December, insists this did not indicate divisions within the administration on North Korea policy.
The seeming contradictions in Washington's rhetoric in the summer and fall of 2017, he said, were an attempt to "tune the radio" with North Korea, sending different signals to see how the North Koreans would respond. (Pyongyang, for example,
responded to Trump's threat of "fire and fury" by threatening Guam.)
Comment: Politically, the US is owned. It is that simple.