Giving Trump North Korea Policy a Chance

By Dennis Wilder

Dennis Wilder served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for East Asian Affairs during President George W. Bush's second term.  He is currently a Research Fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for U.S-China Dialogue on Global Issues.

It is fashionable in Washington to deride, or even condemn, every move President Donald Trump makes that is a departure from past, staid U.S. foreign policy.  Secretary of State Tillerson’s terse public statement on Wednesday’s North Korean KN-14 missile test into the Sea of Japan was the latest example of departing from past diplomatic norms, and should be read by China and others as an indication that the U.S. Administration is nearing the end of its patience with North Korean antics.  Trump’s new and public pressure on Beijing may be the best course to avoid a catastrophic conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

Trump’s decision to depart from past practice was most vividly seen in the Financial Times interview published April 3.  By telling the Chinese leader that the United States is capable of handling the problem on its own, Trump is challenging 20 years of U.S. foreign policy conventional wisdom that the road to a solution on North Korea runs through Beijing.  Now, with the North Koreans clearly intent on building a nuclear-armed ICBM capable of targeting the continental United States for the first time, Trump is framing the Chinese President’s choice starkly.  In essence he is saying that it is time for China not just to make some tactical adjustments in its North Korea policy, but to make a strategic choice to bring great pressure on North Korea.  Moreover, if China is unwilling to make that strategic adjustment, the United States will reluctantly have to begin to take unilateral actions that may run counter to China’s national interests.

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