Category: US Government

Yes Trump’s personal diplomacy may not have led to any long term solutions for the North Korea problem, but neither has any of his predecessors plans lead to anything either:

Donald Trump’s unconventional summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018 and 2019 produced nothing, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a forum here Friday.

The United States under Trump’s presidency was “not traditional for what America’s role has been in the world,” the retired Marine general and former head of Central Command said at a gathering hosted by the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Korea Society in Seoul.

The two nations were threatening war in 2017, but Kim and Trump emerged friends from their 2018 summit in Singapore, trading “love letters” afterwards. The two met again the following year in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

Trump hailed the meetings as momentous developments, but foreign policy experts widely criticized them for failing to produce any agreements between the two countries.

“As far as what came out of it, I would say nothing,” Mattis said of the summits. “I saw nothing that came out of it.”

In 2020, North Korea resumed missile tests and its bellicose statements aimed at the U.S. and South Korea. North Korea has so far this year launched 17 rounds of missile tests, a one-year record.

“President Trump was an unusual leader” who believed in “personal diplomacy,” Mattis said.

“He was convinced that he could work something out with Kim — I was not optimistic,” he added. “My job was to make certain I did everything I could to stand by the [South Korean] Ministry of Defense and make certain the U.S. military … ties were absolutely at the top of their game to ensure that we were buying the time to safely engage in that summit.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is likely a good thing to let the Chinese know exactly where the U.S. stands if they try and attack Taiwan:

President Joe Biden, speaking Monday during his first visit presidential visit to Japan, signaled an apparent end to the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity by saying the United States would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.

“Yes,” Biden replied when asked by a reporter in Tokyo if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend the island.

“That’s the commitment we made,” he said at a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The U.S. has maintained a “One China policy” that acknowledges Beijing’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. However, the policy doesn’t give China the right to use force to take over the island, Biden said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

If it was going to take this long to get someone approved to fill South Korea’s ambassador position the Biden administration should have just kept Admiral Harris in place. He is a retired military officer that has served in a bipartisan fashion under Democrat and Republican administrations:

The former U.S. ambassador to South Korea on Wednesday said he was “disappointed” that his position remains unfilled since he stepped down in January.

Speaking at a panel hosted by The Korea Society in New York, Harry Harris, a retired admiral who once led U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Pacific Fleet, said he received “calls or emails from our friends in Seoul regularly” about the lack of a U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

“We still don’t have an ambassador nominated to replace me yet,” Harris said during the panel discussion that also included retired Army Gen. Robert Abrams, the former commander of U.S. Forces Korea; retired Adm. Scott Swift, the former commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet; and retired Army Gen. Walter Sharp, a former USFK commander.

Harris served as the ambassador from July 2018 to January 2021. President Donald Trump nominated him to fill a 16-month vacancy, and the Senate confirmed him by voice vote.

President Joe Biden has not named a new ambassador to South Korea since his inauguration Jan. 20. Christopher Del Corso, a career diplomat and a former U.S. Marine, serves as chargé d’affaires ad interim.

Harris – the first Asian American to achieve four-star rank in the Navy – said he offered to remain as ambassador for six months until his replacement was nominated.

“It’s been over a year since our election,” he told the panel. “I tell my friends this is emblematic of the divided political landscape in America in the 2020s.” Harris described the absence of a nomination as “legislative malpractice” but added that the blame ought not to be directed at the Senate “since the White House hasn’t even nominated someone.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the US embassy in Seoul will soon have a new location to call home:

A key administrative process to relocate the U.S. embassy building in Seoul was approved by city officials Thursday, opening the door for the beginning of the construction project that will close the embassy’s half-century-old presence in the heart of the South Korean capital.

The Seoul metropolitan government’s city planning and construction committee approved the district units plan of the U.S. embassy’s new site in Yongsan-dong of Seoul’s central Yongsan Ward.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Nam Hyun-woo in the Korea Times writes that Trump was soft on North Korean missile launches and that the Biden administration will take a harder line:

This contrasts with the previous Donald Trump administration, which downplayed Pyongyang’s missile launches while attempting to achieve denuclearization through summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

In contrast, the Biden administration has been signaling a hard-line approach to North Korea and diplomatic efforts simultaneously, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying both pressure and diplomatic options are on the table to deal with Pyongyang.

“During the Trump administration, the U.S. did not respond to short-range ballistic missiles, but now the Biden administration is mentioning Thursday’s launch violated U.N. resolutions,” said Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow at Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Although Biden also said the U.S. can also respond on its own, the bottom line is that it is returning to a rules-based international order based on liberalism.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Mr. Nam must have forgotten all the “rocket man” and “fire and fury” rhetoric from former President Trump on top of the pressure campaign that is widely believed to have brought Kim Jong-un into negotiations. The negotiations as we all know went no where, but it did stop the missile launches and nuclear tests.

It is too early to state whether the Biden administration is taking a hardline or not on North Korea, but to claim that the Trump administration was some how soft on North Korea is inaccurate.