The Trump administration’s top diplomat said the US is willing to engage in talks with North Korea, even as President Donald Trump warned about the possibility of armed conflict with the nuclear-armed regime.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told NPR Thursday that the US would be willing to negotiate with Pyongyang. It’s a step other administrations have been reluctant to do, seeing it as a reward for the regime’s aggressive and belligerent behavior. It’s also a step that Vice President Mike Pence ruled out less than two weeks ago.
Asked if the administration would consider talks, Tillerson said, “Obviously, that will be the way we would like to solve this. But North Korea has to decide they’re ready to talk to us about the right agenda, and the right agenda is not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things. That’s been the agenda for the last 20 years.”
But in his own interview on Thursday, Trump warned, “There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea, absolutely.”
Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview that “we’d love to solve things diplomatically, but it’s very difficult.”
Tillerson’s comments came on the eve of a US-led United Nations meeting on North Korea Friday that’s meant to intensify pressure on the isolated country and convey in no uncertain terms that Washington expects other countries to help. Tillerson’s willingness to talk to North Korea is a sharp break from weeks of increasingly tough rhetoric and may help ease growing regional tensions.
But the contradiction with Pence, not to mention Trump’s strong warning Thursday night, may leave allies uncertain. Pence told CNN in a recent exclusive interview that the US will not be negotiating directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un anytime soon.
“The only thing we need to hear from North Korea is that they are ending and ultimately dismantling their nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program,” Pence said aboard the USS Ronald Reagan at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan.
As a candidate, Trump had said he would be willing to speak with Kim, but asked if direct negotiations with North Korea were a possibility, Pence replied, “not at this time.”
The administration has also been trying to change Kim’s calculus through shows of force and tough talk, with Trump warning that if China doesn’t act to restrain Pyongyang, “we will.” But Tillerson also made clear in his NPR interview that the US is not seeking regime change or a reunified Korean peninsula, but simply a denuclearized North Korea.
The administration has also shifted its rhetoric about Kim, with Tillerson telling Fox News that “all indications are that he is not crazy.” Citing intelligence assessments and psychological analyses, Tillerson said, “he may be ruthless,” and “he may be a murderer, he may be someone who, in many respects, we would say by our standards is irrational. But he is not insane.”
And Trump expressed something that sounded like sympathy for the 33-year-old autocrat.
“He’s 27 years old. His father dies, took over a regime. So say what you want, but that is not easy, especially at that age,” Trump told Reuters. “I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit, I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do. As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational.”
At the UN Security Council Friday, Tillerson will convey the US belief that more pressure is needed to rein in Pyongyang’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them across continents. The secretary insisted to Fox that the administration’s approach is different from that of the Obama administration in both intensity and expectations for global cooperation.
The administration has delivered a drumbeat of warnings about the dangers of North Korea this week. The display is meant to put the world — and, in particular, North Korea and its main protector, China — on notice that the Trump administration has made this a top priority.
China has certainly noticed and is conveying its alarm. Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Thursday that “the current situation on the Korean Peninsula runs the potential risk of spiraling out of control.”
A Foreign Ministry spokesman also signaled China’s displeasure about the tone of the UN meeting. “If this meeting focuses on only imposing more sanctions and exerting more pressure, I think this meeting will become a lost opportunity,” spokesman Geng Shuang said Friday. “It may aggravate the confrontation between relevant sides and harm current efforts in promoting peace and dialogue.”
He added that the US willingness to negotiate was “a positive and constructive signal and we commend it.
Pressuring China is part of the administration’s goal.
“I think the Chinese seem to be willing to work with us,” Tillerson said. “We hope they are. We believe that they are an important element to us causing the regime to take a different view towards future talks.”
Tillerson told Fox that China has threatened North Korea with further sanctions if Kim’s regime undertakes another nuclear test. Beijing told the US it has asked North Korea not to test a nuclear weapon and, said Tillerson, “we were told by the Chinese that they informed the regime that if they did conduct further nuclear tests, China would be taking sanctions action on their own.”
Tillerson will focus the Security Council meeting on steps that members can take collectively and individually to pressure North Korea. State Department acting spokesman Mark Toner this week said sanctions and diplomatic isolation are possibile options. “The overarching goal here is to apply pressure on and find ways we can apply pressure collectively,” he said.
But the administration’s brinksmanship, particularly with an unpredictable and unstable leader such as Kim, has put some observers on edge.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “the White House is ratcheting up rhetoric in a way that has no off-ramp. If you continue to ratchet this up, what happens when North Korea does something?” asked Duckworth, an Iraq War combat veteran. “Are we then bound to attack them?”