Fear: Trump in the White House

Trump’s tweet was not without supporters. A writer for the conservative Washington Examiner concluded: “One of former President Barack Obama’s central challenges was the foreign perception—by friends and foes alike—that he was reluctant to employ the full range of U.S. power. . . . I believe Trump is right to roll the dice and take the opposite approach.”

Trump was not done. Nor was he satisfied that it sufficed for the United States, the top nuclear power in the world, to issue an unprecedented threat.

Within the White House but not publicly, Trump proposed sending a tweet declaring that he was ordering all U.S. military dependents—thousands of the family members of 28,500 troops—out of South Korea.

The act of removing the dependents would almost certainly be read in North Korea as a signal that the United States was seriously preparing for war.

On December 4, McMaster had received a warning at the White House. Ri Su-yong, the vice chairman of the Politburo, had told intermediaries “that the North would take the evacuation of U.S. civilians as a sign of imminent attack.”

Withdrawing dependents was one of the last cards to play. The possible tweets scared the daylights out of the Pentagon leadership—Mattis and Dunford. A declaration of intent to do so from the U.S. commander in chief on Twitter was almost unthinkable.

A tweet about ordering all military dependents out of South Korea could provoke Kim. The leader of a country like North Korea that only recently had acquired nuclear weapons and had many fewer nukes than a potential adversary could be trigger-happy. A use-it-or-lose-it mind-set could take hold.

The tweet did not go out. But Trump wouldn’t drop the matter, and raised the issue of withdrawing U.S. military dependents with Senator Graham.

On December 3, before Trump and Kim’s war of words, and after a North Korean ICBM test, Graham had advocated removing military families from South Korea. “It’s crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. He suggested making South Korea an unaccompanied tour for service members and said, “I think it’s now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.”

Now, a month later, when Trump called, Graham seemed to have had a change of heart.

“You need to think long and hard before you make that decision,” Graham said. “Because when you make that decision, it is hard to go back. The day you do that is the day you rock the South Korean stock market and the Japanese economy. That is a big frigging deal.”

“You think I should wait?” Trump asked.

“Mr. President,” Graham said, “I don’t think you should ever start this process unless you’re ready to go to war.”

Trump had stayed his Twitter finger for the moment, but the issue of U.S. military dependents in South Korea did not go away. The U.S. military, however, continued to send dependents to South Korea.

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37

General Kelly informed the president that his two top foreign policy advisers, McMaster and Tillerson, were in a ferocious fight over who would negotiate with Saudi Arabia to get $4 billion. The money was in part to fund operations in Syria, including a top secret CIA project for the Syrian rebels code-named TEAK.

Getting foreign governments to fund U.S. military and CIA operations in foreign countries remained one of Trump’s biggest goals. Damn H.R., Trump said. This pointy-head academic has no sense of business or how to negotiate.

Kelly agreed, McMaster was not the guy for the job and so far had not been very successful with the Saudis. They were often willing to write big checks for a variety of projects in Syria. According to Tillerson, McMaster had stepped in and said, “I’m reaching out to my counterparts in Saudi. I’m going to negotiate directly with them.”

The president was furious. Even with a multitude of problems with Tillerson, at least he had experience cutting deals with the Saudi royal family for years as the Exxon CEO. Tillerson also knew the Saudis could not be trusted and for Trump, not trusting the people on the other side of the table was a first principle of haggling, of beating them down to get a better bargain. You had to be tough and say no to get to yes. Why the hell would McMaster take this away from Tillerson? It doesn’t make any sense, he said.

But there was a more pressing matter that day, January 19, 2018, one day short of Trump’s first full year.

In several secure phone conversations with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, Trump had intensified his criticism of the KORUS trade agreement between the two countries. He would not let go of the $18 billion trade deficit and the $3.5 billion expense of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops. The refrain was jeopardizing relations with Moon, whom he disliked. Trump’s obsessive and unfiltered venting had brought him to the edge once again.

Trump told Moon he wanted to send a 180-day termination letter and destroy the trade relationship.