Trump on North Korea: Tactic? ‘Madman Theory’? Or Just Mixed Messages?<br />By DAVID E. SANGERAPRIL 28, 2017<br />WASHINGTON — It was only a few hours after his secretary of state cracked open the door on Thursday to negotiating with the North Koreans<br />that President Trump stepped in with exactly the kind of martial-sounding threats against the country that the White House, until now, had carefully avoided.<br />"Absolutely." Viewed in the most charitable light, Mr. Trump was, in his own nondiplomatic way, building pressure to force the North into a freeze of its nuclear and missile tests, the first step toward resuming the kind of negotiations<br />that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had spoken of earlier in the day.<br />Then, seven years ago, came the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel — most likely<br />by a North Korean torpedo, though the country denies it — that took 46 lives.<br />But for North Korea, lashing out to send a message is an art form, practiced since the days when Mr. Kim’s grandfather ordered the<br />seizure of an American ship, the Pueblo, in 1968, followed by the shooting down of an American reconnaissance plane, killing 31.<br />Behind the scenes in the Trump White House, officials are just beginning to debate how to react to potential North Korean acts.<br />But the most likely explanation is that Mr. Trump, who until now has largely avoided taking the bait<br />that the North Korean propaganda machine churns out with its own warnings of imminent war, simply reverted to an old habit: sounding as tough as the other guy.<br />It is notable that the shooting down of the American spy plane in Nixon’s time, one of the largest losses of Americans<br />in a Cold War military attack, did not result in retaliation, in part for fear of rekindling the Korean War.
