How did we get here?

By John Burton

Until recently, it appeared that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump for all intents and purposes would be following the policy adapted by President Barack Obama toward North Korea – one of “strategic patience,” or maybe in the new president’s case, “strategic patience plus,” meaning tougher sanctions.

After all, Trump had campaigned during the election on an “America First” platform that suggested a more isolationist foreign policy and whatever interest he had in issues overseas appeared directed to either fighting ISIS in the Middle East or taking a tougher line on trade with China.

But all that changed two weeks ago when the U.S. launched a cruise missile strike against Syria. Suddenly, the narrative became that Trump was sending an indirect but blunt signal to Pyongyang that he was serious about ending its nuclear and missile program. “The same thing can happen to you, Kim Jong-un!” appeared to be Trump’s message.

The fact that the attack was ordered while Trump was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, the southern White House, also represented a clear message to Beijing that it needed to do more in imposing punishing sanctions on Pyongyang. This position that was made even more explicit when Trump told Xi during a call last week that he would take a softer line on trade issues with China if Beijing played ball on North Korean sanctions.

Other signs of a muscular approach on North Korea have multiplied, including deploying a task force led by the U.S. carrier USS Carl Vinson to the East Sea and dropping the “Mother of All Bombs” on Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, an unsubtle hint the bomb, designed to attack underground bunkers, could be used against North Korea’s hidden nuclear facilities.

Now the talk in the U.S., if the media serves as any guide, is that Washington is on a collision course with Pyongyang and is ready to go to war with North Korea by launching a preemptive strike in the case of another nuclear test.

So what happened to change the mood over the last few months since Trump took office? First, there was North Korea’s test in mid-February of a new solid-fuel missile, which represented a technological breakthrough for Pyongyang and advertised its ability to quickly launch missiles from mobile platforms that are difficult to detect. In addition, the missile test came as Trump was meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago and thus was seen as a provocative act aimed at the two leaders.

The impression that North Korea was accelerating its missile development program was strengthened by several other missile launches in the last few weeks, including the simultaneous firing of four missiles directed toward Japan.

This coincided with the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, by smearing his face with the outlawed VX chemical agent at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. That just reinforced the view that North Korea’s young leader was “mad, bad and dangerous.”

All these events have fed into the Washington consensus on North Korea, which Jim Walsh at the MIT Security Studies Program caustically described as follows at a recent seminar sponsored by the Korea Economic Institute of America:

“The North Korea leadership is aggressive and perhaps irrational. The North might attack the US and is looking to retake the South. Since the North is an evil regime we should not negotiate with it. If we were to negotiate, Pyongyang would cheat. The 1994 Agreed Framework was a disaster. Sanctions are good, sanctions are not working and so we need more sanctions. Of course, this is China’s fault. China could solve the problem if it really wanted to, but they don’t because Beijing and Pyongyang are pals. So, if Beijing is not helping, we should threaten them and sharpen their choices. If that means ringing them with missiles or sanctioning their banks, so be it. If we pressure them, they will want to cooperate with us.”

Frustration over changing North Korea’s behavior has also contributed to loose talk in Washington in recent months about taking “kinetic action,” meaning launching military strikes. This is by no means the prevalent view, but it does help “normalize” the concept of a conflict, particularly within the American broadcast media, where the drums of war are heard particularly loudly.

So, it appears that Donald Trump has started to accept the hard-line Washington consensus, particularly since he has surrounded himself with military generals as his national security advisor and secretary of defense.

But there may also be another reason for his new bellicose stance on North Korea. That is seeing the public and media reaction to his missile strike against Syria. Suddenly, news of Russia-gate, which appeared to threaten his presidency, has largely disappeared off the front pages.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Washington,. D.C.-based journalist and consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.