MILITARY/NORTH KOREA/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The Trump administration plunged America’s Asian allies into new confusion Thursday over its strategy for countering North Korea’s nuclear threat, as the chief White House strategist and top general offered radically different approaches to the crisis…
Stephen K. Bannon, the nationalist ideologue who is Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, said in an interview that there was ‘no military solution’ in the Korean Peninsula, and that he might consider a deal in which United States troops withdrew from South Korea in exchange for a verifiable freeze in the North’s nuclear program.
But Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was concluding a three-day visit to Beijing, dismissed the possibility of an American troop withdrawal. Speaking to reporters, he repeated the president’s earlier position that the United States was prepared to take military action against the North if needed…
The statements compounded confusion at a time when America’s allies in East Asia are already nervous about its commitment to defend them, should Pyongyang acquire the ability to strike United States cities with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.”
-Jane Perlez and Choe Sang-Hun, “Contradictory Remarks by Bannon and Dunford Deepen Confusion Over U.S. Strategy for North Korea,” The New York Times online, Aug. 16, 2017