Tag: Bob Woodward

Just like President Trump is claimed in Woodward’s book to have been exploring the ordering of a preemptive strike on North Korea, what is the big deal if he was likewise exploring the option of removing dependents from South Korea?

Woodward writes that Trump even proposed sending a tweet declaring that he was ordering all U.S. military dependents out of South Korea, an act that would likely be read in North Korea as a signal that the United States was preparing for war.

The tweet never went out.

On Dec. 3, after another North Korean ICBM test, Sen. Lindsay Graham advocated removing U.S. troops’ families from South Korea in an interview. The book says that, the following day, McMaster was informed that Ri Su-yong, a vice chairman of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee and director of the committee’s International Affairs Department, told intermediaries “that the North would take the evacuation of U.S. civilians as a sign of imminent attack.”

Hence, withdrawing the dependents of American troops should be “one of the last cards to play,” and the possible tweets were described by Woodward as having “scared the daylights out of the Pentagon leadership,” Defense Secretary James Mattis and Dunford.

Graham, in a change of heart, was said to have advised Trump in a phone call in January that a decision to withdraw U.S. troops’ families is “hard to go back” on, and that it would “rock the South Korean stock market and the Japanese economy.” When asked by Trump if he should delay such an evacuation, Graham, who has been a hard-liner on the North, was quoted as telling him, “I don’t think you should ever start this process unless you’re ready to go to war.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

If what is discussed in Woodward’s book is true, Trump like many people not familiar with the situation, may have thought removing dependents would be a good idea to make sure a preemptive strike option could be executed if needed.  Clearly his aides and Senator Graham advised him otherwise of the difficulties and ramifications of removing dependents from South Korea and the President decided otherwise.

Assuming this claim is true in Woodward’s latest rumormongering book, I don’t see what the problem is with the US President weighing the options available to address the North Korean nuclear issue.  Obviously after been given the information President Obama decided not to do it:

Former U.S. President Barack Obama mulled a preemptive attack on North Korea after its fifth nuclear test in 2016, according to a book released Tuesday.

Obama was deeply disturbed to learn that North Korea had conducted its biggest-yet nuclear detonation on Sept. 9, 2016, with the North claiming the new nuclear bomb could be mounted on a ballistic missile, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in “Fear: Trump in the White House.”

“Even with his intense desire to avoid a war, Obama decided the time had come to consider whether the North Korean nuclear threat could be eliminated in a surgical military strike,” the book claims.

“The North Korean threat had not been diminished, and in September 2016 Obama posed a sensitive question to his National Security Council: Was it possible to launch a preemptive military strike, supported by cyber attacks, on North Korea to take out their nuclear and missile programs?” it continues.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the closest the US came to a preemptive strike was during the Clinton Administration when the nuclear issue first came up.  Strike planning was called off after Jimmy Carter’s unilateral intervention by traveling to Pyongyang. It does make me wonder how different things would be now if the Clinton administration did in fact launch this strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?

Here are some of the excerpts involving the Korean peninsula from Bob Woodward’s new book about the Trump administration:

A former senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump removed a document from the president’s desk to stop him from signing off on withdrawing the United States from a trade deal with South Korea, a news report citing an unpublished book said Tuesday.

Bob Woodward, a Washington Post journalist known for his investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal, wrote the anecdote in his new book, “Fear,” set for release next week, the paper said.

Woodward also wrote, based on in-depth interviews with administration officials whose identities were not revealed, that Trump’s handling of the North Korean nuclear threat caused anxiety among his subordinates.

“According to Woodward, Cohn ‘stole a letter off Trump’s desk’ that the president was intending to sign to formally withdraw the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea,” the Post wrote, referring to Trump’s former top economic adviser, Gary Cohn.

“Cohn later told an associate that he removed the letter to protect national security and that Trump did not notice that it was missing,” it said.

Trump is known to have considered terminating the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement last year before stopping short due to tensions over North Korea’s sixth nuclear test in September.

The two sides later renegotiated the deal but have yet to formally sign it.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

I find it hard to believe that something as significant as withdrawing from the US-ROK FTA would be something that President Trump would just forget about, he probably never intended to sign it in the first place.  This just seems like typical Trump approach of making a threatening demand to show his seriousness to later settle for a better deal.

At a National Security Council meeting in January, Trump downplayed the importance of the U.S. troop presence in South Korea and questioned why government resources were being spent in the region, the paper quoted the book as saying.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis responded, “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” it said. “After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, ‘Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like – and had the understanding of – ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’”

I find it believable that Secretary Mattis made the “prevent World War III” comment, but I find it hard to believe that Secretary Mattis would openly mock the President in front of his aides.

One month into the Trump administration, U.S. Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Joe Dunford was “rattled” when Trump asked him to prepare a plan for a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea.

I doubt someone of General Dunford’s stature and experience gets “rattled” by much of anything.  I would hope the Pentagon has a pre-emptive strike plan for North Korea on the shelf.  If the President wants to review it that seems prudent.

And last fall, Trump mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a United Nations speech by calling him “Little Rocket Man.” Aides worried that he may be provoking Kim, but the president told his then aide Rob Porter that it was a “contest of wills,” according to The Post’s account of the book.

“This is all about leader versus leader. Man versus man. Me versus Kim,” Trump was quoted as saying.

This last excerpt I can actually see the President saying.