He delivered contradictory comments on North Korea from provocative and bombastic to assertions that he wanted peace. In May he said he would be “honored” to meet with Kim “under the right circumstances.” In August he told the press, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
With no resolution, McMaster issued a new strategy outlining a North Korea Pressure Campaign. The plan, put forward in a signed document, was designed to pressure North Korea and China to negotiate the North’s nuclear weapons program and cease development of their ICBMs. Treasury would work on sanctions. State would work on engagement with China to pressure the North.
The Defense Department was to make military incursions such as overflights, going into their airspace in exercises called Blue Lightning, and engage in limited cyber activity to demonstrate capability and show the threat. But these actions were not to trigger an unintended conflict.
McMaster kept repeating in the NSC that Trump could not accept a nuclear North Korea.
But the president summed up his position on almost everything in an interview with The New York Times. “I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions.”
* * *
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dunford formed a strategic communications cell in his Operations Directorate, J3, to look at the messaging opportunities in North Korea. What actions could be taken that were just threatening enough to be a deterrent?
When there were three aircraft carriers in the vicinity, Mattis voiced discomfort. Could this trigger an unanticipated response from Kim? Could the United States start the war they were trying to avoid? He showed more concern about this than many others in the Pentagon and certainly in the White House.
Mattis was a student of historian Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August about the outbreak of World War I. “He’s obsessed with August 1914,” one official said, “and the idea that you take actions, military actions, that are seen as prudent planning, and the unintended consequences are you can’t get off the war train.” A momentum to war builds, “and you just can’t stop it.”
Mattis did not want war. The status quo and a no-war strategy, even amid powerful, overwhelming tensions, were a win/win.
The official summed it up: “Mattis and Dunford’s view is that North Korea can be contained. Dunford actually said, ‘This was my advice to the president.’?”
* * *
On September 19, 2017, President Trump gave his first address to the United Nations General Assembly. For the first time, he dubbed the North Korean Leader “Rocket Man.” He said the United States, if forced to defend itself, “will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
Kim fired back three days later. “A frightened dog barks louder,” and said Trump is “surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire. I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”
In a tweet on September 23 Trump called Kim “Little Rocket Man.”
Trump and Rob Porter were together in the president’s front cabin on Air Force One. Fox News was on the TV.
“Little Rocket Man,” Trump said proudly. “I think that may be my best ever, best nickname ever.”
“It is funny,” Porter said, “and it certainly seems to have gotten under Kim’s skin.” But, he asked, “What’s the endgame here? If we continue to amp up the rhetoric and get into a war of words and it escalates, what are you hoping to get out of this? How does this end?”
“You can never show weakness,” Trump replied. “You’ve got to project strength. Kim and others need to be convinced that I’m prepared to do anything to back up our interests.”
“Yes, you want to keep him on his toes,” Porter said. “And you want some air of unpredictability from you. But he seems pretty unpredictable. And we’re not sure, is he even well? Is he all mentally there? He doesn’t have the same political constraints that other people do. He seems very much to want to be taken seriously on the international stage.”
“You’ve got to show strength,” the president repeated.
“I wonder,” Porter plowed on, “if embarrassing him is more likely to sort of get him into submission or if it could also provoke him?”
Trump didn’t respond. His body language suggested that he knew Kim was capable of anything. Then he offered his conclusion: It was a contest of wills. “This is all about leader versus leader. Man versus man. Me versus Kim.”
* * *
At the end of September, General Kelly asked Graham to come to the White House for an upcoming tabletop exercise on North Korea.
Contradictory messages from Trump and Tillerson were flooding the news. For weeks, Tillerson had been out publicly with what he called the “Four Nos”: The United States was not seeking regime change; or a collapse of the regime; was not looking for an accelerated reunification of the North and South; and did not want an excuse to send troops into the North.
“We’ve got the guy guessing,” Kelly said to Graham, referring to Kim Jong Un.
Graham made a dramatic proposal to Kelly and McMaster. “China needs to kill him and replace him with a North Korean general they control,” Graham said. China had at least enough control so the North would not attack. “I think the Chinese are clearly the key here and they need to take him out. Not us, them. And control the nuclear inventory there. And wind this thing down. Or control him. To stop the march to a big nuclear arsenal. My fear is that he will sell it.”
He proposed that Trump tell China: “The world is a dangerous place. I am not going to let this regime threaten our homeland with a nuclear weapon.”
Graham said Trump had told him he would not let this happen. He had done everything but take an ad out in the newspaper telling the world what Trump had told him to his face.
* * *
On October 1, months after Tillerson had begun publicly reaching out to North Korea to open a dialogue, Trump tweeted: “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”
The bellicose tweet was widely interpreted as undermining the nation’s top diplomat.
Trump had apparently been seized by an impulse. During the presidential campaign, Trump himself had extended an olive branch voicing a willingness to negotiate with Kim over a hamburger.
But overlooked was that Trump had a way of appearing to strengthen his own hand by creating a situation, often risky, that did not previously exist. Threatening the volatile North Korean regime with nuclear weapons was unthinkable, but he had done it. It turned out to be only the beginning. The go-along, get-along presidency of the past was over.
* * *
Trump was soon tugging harder on Kelly’s leash and after several months the Kelly mystique of controlling Trump faded. It was clear that Trump didn’t like outsider control emotionally, as if to say, I can’t deal with this anymore. I feel cocooned. I feel I’m no longer in charge.
In November, Trump saw Chris Crane, the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) union, complaining on Fox News about access to Trump. He said Trump was letting them down. The union had endorsed Trump six weeks before the election, the first time the National ICE Council, as it was called, had endorsed a presidential candidate.
Trump went through the roof.
Kelly and Chris Crane had an intense dislike for each other. When Kelly had been secretary of homeland security, he had blocked ICE agents from a hard-line crackdown on some immigration violations.
Trump invited Crane to the Oval Office without informing Kelly. Kelly’s cut off all our access, Crane said. We put ourselves on the line for you. We endorsed you. We support all your policies. Now we can’t even communicate with you.
Kelly heard Crane was in the Oval Office and strode in. Soon Crane and Kelly were cursing each other.
“I can’t believe you’d let some fucking guy like this into the Oval Office,” Kelly told Trump. If this was the way it was going to work, he said, “then I quit!” And he stormed out.