Islam Times - Why is Mike Pompeo in North Korea

Islam Times - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is engaged in a protracted political negotiation with North Koreans to reach an agreement on the country’s nuclear weapons while President Donald Trump is distracted with other issues, according to E. Michael Jones, an American writer and political analyst in Indiana.

Jones, a writer, former professor, media commentator and the current editor of the Culture Wars magazine, made the remarks.

“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just arrived in North Korea to discuss a further attempt at the denuclearization of North Korea. What we are seeing here is the follow up of the historic meeting Kim John-un had with Donald Trump just a little while ago,” Jones said.

“What we are seeing also here is the fallout of Trump’s negotiating policies which we had seen in his book the Art of Deal. He has the practice of making outrageous claims at the beginning of any negotiating process, as for example when he told North Korea that he was going to rain fire and fury over them, meaning he’d drop nuclear bombs on North Korea,” he added.

“But then in the course of negotiations, he backed away from his original claim and then his approach was reasonable which is what he did when he met with the president of North Korea. And at that point the other side was so relieved that it immediately accepted that was going to happen,” the analyst said.

“This may work in a real estate deal but it is difficult to see how it is going to be implemented in a long, drawn-out diplomatic process, because Trump has in many ways short-circuited the entire diplomatic process, he short-circuited his own State Department with his Twitter account,” he noted.

“The problem is you cannot have an agreement without a long-term negotiation and the question is whether his strategy is going to work or whether Kim Jong-un really trusts him,” the commentator noted.

“In the light of Trump reneging on the Iranian nuclear deal, there’s a lot of evidence for the North Koreans that the United States can’t be trusted but you can spring them along and basically get what you want from the protracted political negotiations while their leader is distracted with other issues,” he observed.

“I think this is why Pompeo is there because the leader of the United States is distracted with other issues,” the writer concluded.
President Trump has said talks with North Korea are going well, just days after Trump declared the country an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to American national security.

"Many good conversations with North Korea-it is going well!"Trump wrote in a post on Twitter on Tuesday. “If not for me,” he added, “we would now be at War with North Korea!”

Following their meeting on June 12 in Singapore, the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader, Trump and Kim signed a joined document, committing to establishing new relations and achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Before signing the document, Kim said the two leaders had “decided to leave the past behind” and that “the world will see a major change.”

Trump said he had formed a “very special bond” with Kim and that Washington’s relationship with Pyongyang would be very different.

But last week, Trump declared North Korea an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the US as he acted to maintain harsh economic sanctions against Pyongyang.

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 bar 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.