Before the Christmas holiday, there was a brief sign of hope that dangerous rising tensions between the Trump administration and North Korea might be about to ease. On Dec. 12, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued the following statement at the Atlantic Council in Washington: “We’ve said from the diplomatic side, we’re ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk. We are ready to have the first meeting without precondition.” Tillerson’s comments were uncharacteristically conciliatory toward Pyongyang, given the fact that during his first speech at the United Nations in September President Trump had threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.”
But not long after Tillerson’s overture to the North, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump’s position on North Korea was unchanged and that negotiations were pointless if the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, continued to menace his neighbors. The disconnect between Tillerson and the White House exposed ongoing public disagreements in the administration on the proper U.S. approach to North Korea. The discord also focused renewed attention on reports that the administration was considering a plan to replace Tillerson at the State Department with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and fill the vacancy at the CIA with conservative Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jon Rainwater, executive director of the group Peace Action, who assesses the mixed signals sent by the Trump administration on beginning negotiations with North Korea with the goal of de-escalating tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile program.
JON RAINWATER: There have been rising tensions. We’re closer to war with North Korea than we ever have been on both sides, particularly the two heads of state have been engaging in the most egregious sort of language towards each other. And Tillerson did recently make a statement in a speech that he was willing to negotiate. That the United States was willing to negotiate and he used the words without preconditions. And this very welcome.
It was actually the dropping of preconditions in negotiations with Iran that led to the breakthrough of starting to talk to Iran that in turn led to the breakthrough of having the nuclear agreement with Iran. People may remember that George W. Bush had put on a precondition with Iran to require Iran to end enrichment of uranium and that did not work very well. During that entire period, Iran just went ahead with its program and created more and more uranium, more lower-enriched uranium, much of it, but they did not listen to the preconditions. So those type of preconditions don’t work.
Tillerson came to the table, so to speak, although it was in a speech saying we could drop preconditions. Now, he left some wiggle room, and then in a subsequent statement, he talked about making sure that there’s an end to missile tests before getting to the table, which sounds an awful lot like a pre-condition. So we are getting a mixed message not only from the administration as a whole, but with Tillerson himself. So it’s a little disappointing, but at least he’s pointing to this opening, so we have to push the administration to really engage in direct talks.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Do we have any indication of what exactly the conflict is between the White House and Tillerson at the State Department?
JON RAINWATER: I think some of it is just on atmospherics and posturing, because a lot of it is going to happen behind closed doors. So you have a situation again with Iran where the Obama administration started reaching out to counterparts in Iran to set up negotiations. And some of that work is apparently happening. Or something analogous is happening with North Korea where there is some at least lower level contacts. So, knowing exactly where the president is at is hard to say. You’ve seen a lot of these tweets by the president criticizing, in a sense, diplomacy that Tillerson is engaging in. You have a lot of aggressive tweets basically downplaying diplomacy and so, clearly there are those in the administration that don’t yet want to drop preconditions and there’s some kind of tug of war going on with the State Department.
But I certainly don’t know exactly who’s where within those debates.
BETWEEN THE LINES: John, what concerns do you have about the coming period? There’s a lot of commentators who talk about the Russia investigation targeting the inner circle of Trump in the White House and the president himself may be charged with one crime or another related to collusion between his campaign and Russia. Is there a concern that in the “wag-the-dog” style we might see more bellicose rhetoric targeting North Korea? And the conceivable triggering of a conflict that would, in effect be a way to distract the American people from the scandal-plagued White House and where the Mueller investigation may be headed?
JON RAINWATER: I think the wag-the-dog scenario is very real and something we should be very concerned about. I’m hopeful that the attention that everybody’s giving it, I mean, the fact that that’s one of your big questions means that people will be ready for it. And ready to say, “Wait a second, you’re just trying to distract us here. We can’t have war with North Korea.”
So I think we have to demand diplomacy now before it gets to that state. And if the administration starts talking about war, we as the public need to put pressure on our members of Congress to push back.
For more information, visit Peace Action’s website at peaceaction.org.
