Danger of mixed messages

When talking about North Korea in public I would have thought that sending mixed (confusing) messages is not the brightest way of going about it. Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, not a born diplomat but one who has had diplomacy thrust upon him, gave the clearest indication - nay, he made an actual statement - that the US was willing to talk to Kim Jong-un "without preconditions". In other words, never mind about your nuclear and ballistic missile programme, let's just have a nice chat. But this is absolutely NOT the US foreign policy position. It never has been. If it's now the new approach, then Kim might think to himself: "See, I've won the argument, I can agree to talk to the Americans but keep going with my nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile programme. They're so desperate to talk to me now they know my country is a nuclear superpower, I've got them by the short and curlies." Or something like that. But Tillerson, not for the first time, was miss-speaking. Trump made it clear very quickly that he was never going to talk to the Little Rocket Man unless he stopped his nuclear and missile programme. And the ultimate goal is NOT to let Kim keep what he has got, but to force the North Korean supreme leader to get rid of all his nukes. So talking to him without pre-conditions is a waste of time. That was Trump's comment the last time Tillerson mentioned about talking to Kim. But Tillerson thought it was ok to bring the subject up again, seeming to hint that the US policy had dramatically changed. Since then, of course, there has been a lot of rowing back, ending up today with the classic often-used statement from the State Department press spokeswoman who tried to impress on everyone that State and the White House were "on the same page" when it came to Kim Jong-un. Ho ho ho! I assume Tillerson got a Trump rocket in a phone call from the Oval Office telling him to get on the same page or else. Well, we know what the "or else" means. Tillerson's days are seriously numbered already. He can't go on gaffing many more times. As I have said so often before, Kim is never going to give up his programmes until he is totally satsfied, and is confident the US intelligence community is satisfied, that he has a nuclear-tipped ICBM that can return from space and reenter the Earth's atmosphere unscathed and hit an American city. He can never be absolutely certain without actually trying it out, but in the nuclear weapons business, near-certainty will be enough to persuade Washington that the Little Rocket Man has become Atomic Man. So talk talk, even about the weather, will achieve nothing until that moment has been reached. Then, of course, it's all too late, unless Trump reverses his policy and goes for containment rather than prevention. I guess from now on Tillerson will have to stay on message. If he doesn't, then his political demise will be brought forward by several weeks.