Perhaps this softer language, just to hear you describe it from the president
in South Korea is an acknowledgment that all this sabre-rattling talk from him
previously threatening fire and fury etc toward Pyongyang may well energize his
core supporters here in the United States but it makes regional allies like
Japan and South Korea nervous now I'm not sure it's a change in policy.
The policy itself is difficult to divine at times these days, but it's certainly a
marker that the U.S does have a diplomatic capability when it comes to
solving this issue, as well as a military one.
So I think we're showing great strength I think they understand we have
unparalleled strength. We have many things happening
that we hope we hope, in fact I'll go a step further, we hope to
god we never have to use. With that being said, I really believe that it makes
sense for North Korea to come to the table and to make a deal that's good for
the people of North Korea and the people of the world.
Now as you might expect, there is some nervousness here in the United States
as this presidential tour of Asia swings into a new phase
President Trump travels to China from South Korea later tonight, but unlike previous presidential
tours, he's making his rounds in a volatile region with very little backup
particularly from the place that used to drive America's foreign policy the State
Department thanks in large part to a kind of hollowing out of that department.
So what are the implications?
When Donald Trump left the White House last week aboard Marine One to begin his
journey to Asia he flew off to shore up allies against North Korea and faced
down his arch-nemesis in Pyongyang. But what's the plan? How well-prepared was
the leader of the free world for his mission? This president who does
diplomacy on a hair-trigger.
The sense that I get is they're doing everything
on the fly. Whenever he travels abroad or whenever he has any diplomatic
engagement it is a hold your breath moment and this is 14 days of holding
our breath and hopefully we're, you know, can come out at the end of that.
It's been said for many years that keeping our adversaries off-balance is a good
thing and I couldn't agree more. The question is are we keeping them off
balance because we are keeping our strategy to ourselves or because we have
no idea what the hell it is we're doing?
Ever since his election, the president's
setting for North Korea had been to threaten bully and stare down Pyongyang,
sometimes sounding more Kim jong-un than Kim jong-un himself.
They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.
Such hot talk and aggressive tweets prompted warnings from observers
of a potential miscalculation that couldn't ensnare allies and enemies alike
in an unnecessary war.
Because I think the North Koreans are actually divorced
from reality and that the only thing that will prompt Kim jong-un to action
is if he believes that his regime is under threat and I don't think
he has the ability to gauge what is true and what is untrue.
The North Koreans are not so stupid it's just that just sit back and say well we're just going to
reach what Trump's tweet and that's that's how we know what the United
States is going to do tomorrow.
Foreign Service officers and specialists represent America abroad...
Who does know what the United States is going to do tomorrow?
Well, that used to be the business of the State Department
...to promote America's values interests and security
But the president has handed his Secretary of State a sledgehammer to
deal with the department meant to manage America's Foreign Affairs.
I will deploy the talent and resources
of the State Department in the most efficient ways possible that may entail
making some changes to how things are traditionally done in this department.
Under ex Tillison there are gaping holes at the very top of the Department of
State and scores of ambassadors haven't been appointed.
But the challenges that we face that that just enhances the risk. Worst case scenario is we have
unnecessary wars, we have you know incidents where people are hurt as a
result of a failure of our government to be managing a really complicated world
as effectively as possible.
We don't have an Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific
and we don't have an ambassador in South
Korea so who's managing everything? Visibly China and North Korea.
Who's dealing with what's happening in the concerns of our Japanese allies?
Who is managing what's happening in the South China Sea? It can't all be managed by the
military because it's not solely a military problem.
Here in the diplomatic quarter in Washington DC on Embassy Row
as it's called, foreign diplomats have
told me that where they used to go to the State Department first to lobby the
US administration, these days not so much.
Instead they'll go to the National
Security Council or straight to the Pentagon.
One X State Department official
says those who are still there tell him Rex Tillerson's cuts are having a
devastating effect.
He's effectively breaking the institution both by
crushing morale, by having people leaving, but also by not utilising it in the
effective way. It's just far less bustling. It just hit me
viscerally when I went back in July when you could just see the deconstruction
that was happening. The Afghanistan Pakistan office was being
completely you know taken apart effectively. It creates a great sense of unease
What's changed is we're actually pushing more power and authority to the
regional desks and the functional desks and to the embassies in the field who
are the people that are actually doing the statecraft and I actually think many
people actually be pleased with what happens so a lot of this is just kind of
the hand wringing of the unknown.
The department's fate is intertwined with that of Rex Tillerson.
The main headline of this story that you called the
President a moron
As he confessed when it was thought he might lose his job reportedly
for calling Donald Trump a moron he serves at the pleasure of the president.
I serve at the appointment of the president and I'm here for as long as
the president feels I can be useful to achieving his objectives.
Your State Department still has some unfilled positions
What the secretary is learning
is that no matter who you are the president knows best
Yeah the one that matters is me. I'm the only one that matters because when it
comes to it that's what the policy is going to be.
Obviously it causes our
allies to question us because they're not sure what we mean, what we don't mean
and whether we'll deliver when we speak. You know if Rex Tillerson says 'A', is 'A'
going to happen or is Donald Trump going to tweet out now it's 'B'?
It's almost as though President Trump has put his state department into storage the only state
craft necessary it seems is his craft his enormous deal-making talents in
Washington they used to build monuments to the country's chief diplomats
founding father and the first Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson stands tall
still watching as the horizon narrows for American power abroad
you