Some analysts say Donald Trump’s divergent messages on Twitter are keeping diplomacy with North Korea alive.
Flip-flopping and showing indecisiveness by leadership in both the United States and North Korea have revealed a growing uncertainty over how each side should move forward in the wake of their second summit in Vietnam, which collapsed before any agreement could be made.
US President Donald Trump caused widespread confusion last week by tweeting that he had ordered the Treasury Department to cancel a new set of “large-scale sanctions” that were announced the day before.
Washington officials, in an attempt to explain the splintered messaging, offered up the story that Trump was referring to an undisclosed package of sanctions not yet revealed. But after the dust settled in Washington, it was reported Trump’s tweet was actually about two Chinese shipping companies that were being targeted by the Treasury Department for helping North Korea evade sanctions.
Trump’s message overruled his own officials, underlining the administration’s fragmented approach to dealing with North Korea and its growing nuclear arsenal.
It also demonstrated that Trump knows the importance of sanctions in getting North Korea to the negotiating table.
In Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, the leadership’s approach appears equally out of sorts.”The president clearly has something in mind about how he wants to move forward, but the administration as a whole doesn’t look like its working in unison,” said James Kim of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.
In a sign of rising tensions last Friday, North Korea suddenly withdrew its officials from a joint liaison office operated in tandem with South Korea along their shared border – one of few tangible signs of progress from South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s outreach to North Korea last year.
The sudden withdrawal stoked fears in Seoul and Washington that the regime would return to reclusiveness after it failed to win any sanctions relief from the summit in Hanoi.
But those fears were snuffed on Monday when North Korean officials returned to the liaison office for work, offering no explanation for the sudden about-face.
