Trump's rhetoric on North Korea echoes loudly in void of US diplomacy

Trump's rhetoric on North Korea echoes loudly in void of US diplomacy

It took more than seven months for the Trump administration to encounter its first real foreign crisis, and when it came, it was largely self-inflicted.

The challenge posed by the North Korean regime’s nuclear weapons programme had been festering for more than a decade but it was Donald Trump who turned it into a global emergency with a few words. The president took his own staff unawares when he went off script on Tuesday to vow “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if the Pyongyang regime made further threats against the US.

As the Kim Jong-un government routinely churns out threats, the president’s choice of words was always going to be a hostage to fortune. And within hours North Korea had responded with a detailed threat to drop missiles in the sea around the US island territory of Guam.

On Friday, in the face of global appeals to dial down the rhetoric, Trump did the opposite, turning a thorny geopolitical nuisance into a personal arm-wrestling contest with Kim. The North Korean leader would “truly regret” any move on Guam or other US or allied territories. Before the week was out, the 160,000 people on the island were being issued official advice on what to do, and what not to do, in the event of a nuclear blast. (Take cover, but don’t look into the “flash or fireball”). By way of a parting shot on Friday evening, Trump also mentioned he was not ruling out a military option for dealing with Venezuela.
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