This is what the North Korea experts are saying about President-Elect Trump’s emphasis on pressuring China to do something about the North Korean nuclear and missile programs:
“Trump will soon learn that he can’t just tweet away North Korea’s ICBM and nuclear programs,” said Robert Manning, a senior analyst at the Atlantic Council. “He is flat out wrong about North Korea not developing a nuclear weapon that can reach the U.S. The only question is when. But it is likely to acquire that capability during his first term.”
Since the election, Trump has repeatedly criticized China for not helping with the North, even raising questions why the U.S. should stick to the “one-China” policy of diplomatically recognizing only Beijing, not Taiwan, when China is uncooperative over the North.
That’s in line with Trump’s campaign remarks that the North is China’s problem to fix.
Experts, however, were skeptical about the idea of pressuring China to resolve the problem.
“He has unrealistic expectations about China’s ability and/or willingness to achieve outcomes in regard to North Korea. He has equally wrong and outdated assumptions about U.S. leverage with China and will learn that through making really dumb mistakes in his first year,” Manning said.
“Trump has already shown his profound ignorance by threatening to discard the One-China policy that is the foundation of US-China relations, threatening to impose 45% tariffs on Chines goods — and then asking Beijing to solve his North Korea problem. That is complete incoherence — and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” he said.
The expert noted that there is little the U.S. can do about the problem in the near term that does not risk a war, “other than strengthening deterrence, imposing tough sanctions that remove North Korea from the international financial system.”
Scott Snyder, a senior expert on Korea at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump’s tweets show he thinks North Korea is a priority issue that is closely linked to China.
“For Trump, the issue is strongly connected to relations with China. However, at present there are few, if any, formal diplomatic channels by which Trump can communicate with the Chinese leadership, and the Chinese foreign ministry appears to have rejected diplomacy by tweet,” Snyder said.
“In addition, Trump appears to have rejected the idea that North Korea’s development of a preemptive strike capability will happen or that it provides Pyongyang with a basis for making demands such as an end annual US-ROK military exercises,” he said.
Joel Wit, a former State Department negotiator with North Korea and currently editor of the website 38 North specializing in North Korean affairs, expressed strong skepticism about Trump’s idea of resolving the problem by pressuring China.
“If he pursues the avenue of trying to get China to solve this problem for the U.S., then he is going to fail just like the Obama administration,” he said. [Yonhap]
That’s right Manning he hasn’t taken office yet and you have no idea what he might implement. So shut up fool.