North Korea: Trump fire talk singes Tillerson’s wings

But Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, worries that “miscalculation due to the mixed messages” could cause an escalation in the conflict.

Many of the experts who spoke to AFP concluded that North Korea has already passed a threshold by developing nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.

Diplomacy may still get Pyongyang to the table, but the immediate US goal has to shift from denuclearization to avoiding the threat of all-out nuclear war.

“There’s no room for anything else other than diplomacy,” said Jeffrey Lewis, arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

“The window to attack them or convince them not to (develop the weapons) has closed.”

– Sleep well –

As Tillerson flew back from the region, he made a pre-planned stop-over on the US territory of Guam, which Kim’s regime has explicitly targeted.

But even there, he brushed off concerns. “I think Americans should sleep well at night. I have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days.”

So who is one to believe? The commander in chief, seemingly laying the rhetorical groundwork for a pre-emptive strike? Or his loyal diplomat, still hopeful that China and Russia will help rein in Kim’s provocations?

White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, hired as an authority on the Islamist threat but an increasingly outspoken spokesman on other security issues, is clear.

“You should listen to the president. The idea that Secretary Tillerson is going to discuss military matters is simply nonsensical,” he told the BBC.

Tillerson’s spokeswoman Heather Nauert insisted that there is no division in the administration on North Korea and that “the pressure campaign is, in our opinion, working.”

And what of Trump? On Thursday, again speaking from his golf club in New Jersey, he praised his diplomats for the “great job” they did in getting the latest sanctions resolution passed.

Then he added: “But probably it will not be as effective as a lot of people think it can be, unfortunately.”