A nuclear crisis with North Korea seems like a time when you’d want everyone in the US administration on the same page. But in the Trump administration, the exact opposite is happening: Top officials are contradicting each other, and the president, in public.
The Trump administration is publicly contradicting itself on North Korea
(Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said North Korean threats to respond to a US strike with nuclear weapons “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” rhetoric that no previous American president has ever used with North Korea. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to cool things down, saying “nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours.”
“Americans,” the secretary said, “should sleep well.”
That soothing rhetoric lasted all of a day. On Thursday, top Trump aide Sebastian Gorka said during a BBC radio appearance that Tillerson was not actually speaking for White House. Trump’s threats, Gorka said, were deadly serious.
“You should listen to the president,” Gorka said. “The idea that Secretary Tillerson is going to discuss military matters is simply nonsensical.”
Gorka got major reinforcement later in the day from President Trump, who said that his past statements “maybe wasn’t tough enough.”
On one level, this isn’t that surprising. Gorka, whose nominal area of expertise is terrorism, has taken a consistently hawkish tone on North Korea in his many recent media appearances. He has, among other things, compared the current standoff to the Cuban Missile Crisis — the closest the world has come to complete nuclear apocalypse. He also has long been willing to defend the president’s most extreme positions, like the “travel ban.” Gorka is a hawk on North Korea, as well as a hardline Trump defender. He’s going to talk like one.
But, on a deeper and more important level, these recent comments could undermine high-stakes diplomatic efforts and send a confusing signal to North Korea at a time where lowering tensions, not raising them, is vital to preventing a scary situation from spiraling further out of control.
Sebastian Gorka has few actual policy responsibilities other than appearing in the media. He has found a way to mess up US foreign policy anyway
Why Gorka’s comments matter so much
For the secretary of state to do one of his core job responsibilities — representing the US in vital, high-level negotiations — foreign countries need to believe that he’s actually speaking for the president when he or she makes policy pronouncements or commits to a negotiated deal. Why would anyone bother talking to America’s nominal top diplomat if what he’s saying doesn’t matter?
What Gorka is saying here, more or less openly, is that Tillerson doesn’t speak for the president or the United States when it comes to North Korea. Only the secretary of defense, Gorka says, has the authority to speak about American decisions to use force.
“It is the job of Secretary Mattis, the secretary of defense, to talk about the military options, and he has done so unequivocally,” Gorka said in the interview. “Secretary Tillerson is the chief diplomat of the United States, and it is his portfolio to handle those issues.”
This kind of blurring of the American message has harmful effects on the North Korean crisis besides clearly undercutting Tillerson’s credibility.
Typically, the US deters North Korean aggression by setting clear and predictable policies. Everyone on the US government is on the same page, making it clear to Pyongyang what they can get away with and what will be met with a US response. Public statements are especially important signaling, because the US doesn’t have a direct line of communication with North Korea. The Kim regime figures out what America is saying through US public statements, making consistency in that messaging all the more important.
That’s not what’s happening in the Trump administration.
What’s happening, instead, is a toxically mixed message. Trump says something super-aggressive on Tuesday, Tillerson tries to calm things down on Wednesday, and then Gorka ratchets everything back up on Thursday. This makes it very hard for North Korea to figure out what American policy actually is, and thus to know where they have to stop to avoid triggering a military conflict. When North Korea doesn’t know where the line is, they’re more likely to inadvertently cross it.
Gorka’s public appearances are typically as aggressive and hyperbolic as this one. His heated rhetoric is often written off as a joke by the Washington press corps.
But the comments about Tillerson and North Korea are no laughing matter. They don’t mean we’re going to war tomorrow, or ever. But they make a confusing and dangerous situation even more confusing and dangerous.
See More:
