JAMES MATTIS/NORTH KOREA/REX TILLERSON: “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was wrapping up a talk a few days ago to sailors of the submarine Kentucky, which carries two dozen nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, when he sent them off with this sober message: ‘If we’ve got to turn something off in a hurry,’ he said, ‘we’re counting on you to turn it off in a hurry.’
Mr. Mattis didn’t specifically mention North Korea and its nuclear program, but nobody on the pier here in Washington state, facing the Pacific Ocean, was in doubt. After all, the defense secretary had just issued a stern formal statement warning North Korea to ‘cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people; and declaring it ‘would lose any arms race or conflict it initiates.’
Meantime, far across that Pacific Ocean, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was sounding a different tone as he headed toward the U.S. island territory of Guam, which had just been threatened by North Korea…
Mixed messages? Yes and no. Messrs. Mattis and Tillerson talk almost every day, usually share their comments with each other beforehand, and have met jointly with their Chinese counterparts to discuss North Korean strategy. They are engaged in a classic good-cop-bad-cop approach…
The real message to North Korea’s leaders, officials say, is that if they don’t like the tough message they are hearing from the American defense chief—who Monday told reporters the U.S. would ‘take out’ any missiles headed to American soil—they need to start listening more closely to America’s top diplomat, Mr. Tillerson. And what he is saying, as he did that day in the Pacific, is that the way out of the current tense standoff over the Korean nuclear program is ‘talks,’ adding that ‘diplomatically, you never like to have someone in a corner without a way for them to get out.’ “
-Gerald F. Seib, “Amid North Korean Tensions, Mattis-Tillerson Show Is Key to the Drama,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 14, 2017 09:36pm