Trump on North Korea: Tactic? ‘Madman Theory’? Or Just Mixed Messages?
By DAVID E. SANGERAPRIL 28, 2017
WASHINGTON — It was only a few hours after his secretary of state cracked open the door on Thursday to negotiating with the North Koreans
that President Trump stepped in with exactly the kind of martial-sounding threats against the country that the White House, until now, had carefully avoided.
"Absolutely." Viewed in the most charitable light, Mr. Trump was, in his own nondiplomatic way, building pressure to force the North into a freeze of its nuclear and missile tests, the first step toward resuming the kind of negotiations
that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had spoken of earlier in the day.
Then, seven years ago, came the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel — most likely
by a North Korean torpedo, though the country denies it — that took 46 lives.
But for North Korea, lashing out to send a message is an art form, practiced since the days when Mr. Kim’s grandfather ordered the
seizure of an American ship, the Pueblo, in 1968, followed by the shooting down of an American reconnaissance plane, killing 31.
Behind the scenes in the Trump White House, officials are just beginning to debate how to react to potential North Korean acts.
But the most likely explanation is that Mr. Trump, who until now has largely avoided taking the bait
that the North Korean propaganda machine churns out with its own warnings of imminent war, simply reverted to an old habit: sounding as tough as the other guy.
It is notable that the shooting down of the American spy plane in Nixon’s time, one of the largest losses of Americans
in a Cold War military attack, did not result in retaliation, in part for fear of rekindling the Korean War.