Islam Times - Trump’s U-turn on North Korea shows chaos in US government

Islam Times - President Donald Trump’s latest somersault on North Korea shows the possibility that complete chaos exists inside the US government, American writer and academic James Petras says.

Trump has declared North Korea an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to US national security as he acted to maintain harsh economic sanctions against Pyongyang, despite a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un earlier this month.

The official declaration came in a notice to Congress on Friday, in which Trump ordered that economic restrictions would continue for one year, according to The Washington Post.

The national emergency Trump signed will keep in place sanctions first imposed a decade ago by President George W. Bush.
It also allows Washington to forbid North Korean leaders from selling or using any assets they may hold in the United States. It is separate from US sanctions related to the North’s human rights issues and international penalties imposed over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“Trump’s policies are very contradictory. On the one hand Trump has praised North Korea, has met with them, and says progress is advancing and then the next he turns around and says they are a major threat. ‘We are going to keep up sanctions,’” Professor Petras said.

“So there are several explanations for that. One is that he is manic depressive. Some of the political psychologists have said that Trump is a very volatile person and moves with impulses that are uncontrolled,” he said.

“The second is that his original overtures to North Korea were public relations since he had been discredited for breaking the agreement with Iran and had created these trade conflicts with Europe and China. And he needed a win or a success for public opinion and he went through this charade of advancing peace with North Korea. Quickly he went back again once he came back to the US, and dealt with his ultra-neoconservative colleagues in the cabinet,” he stated.

“And a third possibility is that there is a complete chaos in the US government. They started a belligerent situation with Iran. They turned around and looked to Korea. Then they started a trade war with China. So there are different forces within the US government that are pulling in the opposition direction and Trump bounces like a jojo between one and the other cabinet advisers, totally unreliable on anything he says one day to the next,” the analyst noted.