In March 2017, Trump's foreign policy team of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Vice President Mike Pence and the tweeter-in-chief himself began a coordinated attack on Kim Jong Un's unction regime, with the interim goals of disrupting Pyongyang's political and military plans, exposing the regime's grave weaknesses, psychologically rattling its leader, and determining if the plump brat was educable or merely a homicidal fat rat dead set on his own extermination. Team Trump's ultimate goal was to set conditions for achieving the long-range goal: denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.
[...] In regards to China, Tillerson said, "No one issue defines the relationship between the U.S. and China. We will be talking about a broad range of issues when I'm in Beijing. But the threat of North Korea is imminent. And it has reached a level that we are very concerned about the consequences of North Korea being allowed to continue on this progress it's been making on the development of both weapons and delivery systems. And it's reached a very alarming state to us."
Tillerson's statements were an explicit repudiation of the Obama-era policy as expressed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat presidential candidate in 2016: "The approach that our administration is taking is of strategic patience in close coordination with our six-party allies."
Good read.
Tillerson is out! Replaced by Pompeo
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tillerson/trump-fires-top-diplomat-tillerson-after-clashes-taps-pompeo-idUSKCN1GP1NJ
Yes. Pompeo is nominated. If confirmed, the NorKs are going to squirm while looking across the table at the face of the former CIA Director.
The difference between Pompeo and Clinton couldn't be starker.
Mike Pompeo has already been approved by the US Senate when he became CIA Director. He is the US Secretary of State. Just like Mulvaney became the CFPB Director when he was appointed by President Trump, as he was already a US Senate approved OMB Director.
Someone else said it better. It is like Michael and Tom Hagen in The Godfather, President Trump needs a wartime Secretary of State before he meets Lil Kim, if we are going to avoid a real war. Rex Tillerson was too willing to go along, to get along. Kim and more importantly, Chinese Leader Xi need to know that De-Nuclearization and elimination of ballistic missiles means exactly that. No trimming, no hold backs. Complete and Total.
No "We stopped enriching, but we still possess the centrifuges." The only acceptable solution is completely remove the centrifuges to Oak Ridge, and destroy the structures. All the enriched uranium, plutonium, and even the raw materials are removed. That reator is emptied, and everything except the reactor and containment are removed, and the reactor vessel is filled with concrete. The fuel is shipped off.
The ballistic missiles are destroyed, the motors, test stands, launch facilities, everything is destroyed, even the test data is erased.
Yes, I know they will cheat. They always cheat. If we are thorough, it will take them another forty years to get back to where they are today.
After all, we are only helping Kim Jong Un achieve his Father's Dream of De-Nuclearization!