Trump’s tweets show lack of coordination and strategy in North Korea negotiations

On Friday, President Trump tweeted that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to not go to North Korea “because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” Just one day earlier, on Thursday, Pompeo had announced that he would be traveling to North Korea next week. This latest Twitter reversal of U.S. diplomacy highlights how uncoordinated are efforts towards denuclearization in North Korea. That does not bode well for the success of U.S. negotiations.

The president explained that his cancellation of the trip hinged on U.S. trading relationships with China, indicating that Pompeo would not be heading to North Korea “most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved.” That relationship has deteriorated markedly as the U.S. slapped new tariffs on Chinese goods and China responded with additional tariffs of its own on Thursday. The president’s comments mean that new talks between the secretary of state and his North Korean counterparts will be on hold for a while as the latest round of talks between the two countries faltered this week.

Although it’s true that talks between the U.S. and North Korea have not yielded much progress, especially after Pompeo’s recent negotiations seem to have hit a snag over secret facilities, Trump’s tweets were an abrupt turnaround from his earlier approach to the North Korean dictatorship. After the Singapore summit this summer, Trump had tweeted that North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat.”

The abrupt reversal signals an alarming lack of coordination in efforts between the president and the State Department on the denuclearization process. This divide, of course, was previously evidenced in North Korea’s characterization of negotiations with Pompeo as “gangster-like” demands despite Trump’s assurances of a good working relationship between the two countries.

Trump’s tweet also shows that the U.S. has yet to develop a clear policy or approach to North Korea. In the same series of tweets that cut off Pompeo’s trip, Trump indicated that he was looking forward to meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. This does not show that Trump has worked out a clear policy towards offering meetings as “carrots” to persuade Pyongyang to come to the negotiating table.

Lack of clear policy and a failure to effectively combine the president’s efforts with those of Pompeo mean that the U.S. is unlikely to have the success that Trump had been so confident in earlier this summer.