Donald Trump appears to roll over as Kim Jong Un brandishes new weapons
President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in the Korean Demilitarized Zone on June 30. Credit: AP/Susan Walsh
Two North Korean missile launches shook up Japan and South Korea last week, making new mockery of the end to nuclear danger that President Donald Trump has alternatively said he accomplished and still hopes to accomplish.
Kim Jong Un has always chosen to communicate by waving weapons. The flavor of the conversation changed in 2018 when photo ops shifted the American leader from "fire and fury" to "we fell in love."
But did any facts on the ground change? Previous presidents blamed by Trump for leaving the United States in the supposedly perilous situation he inherited might not see much difference.
The Pyongyang regime hailed a “new-type tactical guided weapon” as a “solemn warning” to South Korea's "military warmongers." Its statement said the tests "must have given uneasiness and agony to some targeted forces enough as it intended." Earlier in the week Kim boasted of new submarines with launch capabilities.
South Korean Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo last Thursday was left to play the adult, urging Kim to refrain from actions that are "not helpful to efforts to ease military tensions on the Korean Peninsula."
Trump, whose level of support for America's allies is continually called into question in the diplomatic world, sounded way more accommodating, in his own special way.
“They haven’t done nuclear testing, they really haven’t tested missiles other than, you know, smaller ones, which is something that lots [of countries] test,” Trump said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about Kim inspecting one of the submarines a few days earlier.
"I went to a defense facility," Pompeo said placidly. "We all go look at our militaries, and we all take pictures of them."
Others monitoring the recent friction in the region aren't taking it lightly.
Earlier last week, South Korea said it fired warning shots at a Russian military aircraft it said had entered its territorial airspace. That incursion is new in the history of the two nations.
It happened as Russia and China conducted a joint air exercise over the Pacific. The hostile exchange came over a chain of disputed islands. Russia maintains it was flying over neutral ocean space and that South Korean jets intercepted them.
National Public Radio quoted Peter Layton, a former Royal Australian Air Force pilot and analyst at the Griffith Asia Institute, as calling the military confrontation "extraordinary" and "a very serious matter."
No immediate guidance on that conflict came from Washington, where the administration seems determined to send the soothing message that all is under control.
So America should hope.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
