August is also when the United States and South Korea conduct major joint military exercises, which always set Pyongyang on edge. In August 2015, tensions escalated into cross-border artillery exchanges after two South Korean soldiers were wounded by land mines laid by North Korea. This juxtaposition of tough sanctions and military exercises has predictably heightened North Korea’s threats.
.. We have long lived with successive Kims’ belligerent and colorful rhetoric — as ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration, I came to expect it whenever we passed resolutions. What is unprecedented and especially dangerous this time is the reaction of President Trump. Unscripted, the president said on Tuesday that if North Korea makes new threats to the United States, “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” These words risk tipping the Korean Peninsula into war, if the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, believes them and acts precipitously.
Either Mr. Trump is issuing an empty threat of nuclear war, which will further erode American credibility and deterrence, or he actually intends war next time Mr. Kim behaves provocatively. The first scenario is folly, but a United States decision to start a pre-emptive war on the Korean Peninsula, in the absence of an imminent threat, would be lunacy.
.. History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea — the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
.. First, though we can never legitimize North Korea as a nuclear power, we know it is highly unlikely to relinquish its sizable arsenal because Mr. Kim deems the weapons essential to his regime’s survival.
.. By most assessments, Mr. Kim is vicious and impetuous, but not irrational.
.. John Kelly, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, must assert control over the White House, including his boss, and curb the Trump surrogates whipping up Cuban missile crisis fears.
.. Fourth, we must continue to raise the costs to North Korea of maintaining its nuclear programs. Ratcheting up sanctions, obtaining unfettered United Nations authority to interdict suspect cargo going in or out of the North, increasing Pyongyang’s political isolation and seeding information into the North that can increase regime fragility are all important elements of a pressure campaign.
Ivanka and Jared, move back to New York
Long before their father’s election, the Trump children enjoyed a stellar reputation among most Manhattan influencers for being hard-working and well raised. They possessed few of the flaws too easily recognizable in other wealthy and well-connected kids.
Often, conversations that centered on the boorish behavior of Trump himself would end with someone citing his children as a mitigating factor against whatever severe judgments were being handed down.
.. In a recent tweet, she declared that she would be “serving alongside John Kelly,” just as the retired four-star Marine general let it be known that all access to the Oval Office would go through him. The real estate heiress not only appeared to be claiming the West Wing as her territory, but she also betrayed a troubling sense of entitlement that one might expect from other billionaires’ daughters but not this one.
.. Though Donald Trump might be loath to admit it, Kushner did much to elect his father-in-law. By quietly building a successful online fundraising and targeting operation far beyond his candidate’s comprehension, Kushner gave Trump a fighting chance to keep the 2016 presidential race close, in the hope that lightning would strike at the right time. It did. And that’s when Kushner’s problems began.
.. Trump’s shocking victory led his son-in-law to believe he could reinvent government like Al Gore, micromanage the White House like James Baker and restructure the Middle East like Moses.
.. Vice presidents, not daughters, should sit in G-20 summits. And a secretary of state should broker Middle East peace. Not an inexperienced 36-year-old son-in-law.
Leon Panetta: How John Kelly can fix the White House
Retired Gen. John F. Kelly has survived combat. The question now is whether he can survive as White House chief of staff.
.. The elements critical to improving White House operations are pretty basic:
.. 1. Trust. There has to be trust between the chief of staff and the president. Each must be honest with the other and be willing to back the other up on personnel and policy decisions.
.. 2. One chief. If there are too many assistants to the president who have no clear portfolio of responsibility but who can go around the chief of staff to the president, that is a prescription for chaos.
For the chief to be successful, he must control all staff, know what each person is responsible for and working on, and be fully aware of all policy discussions taking place with the president.
.. 3. A clear chain of command. Every staff member needs supervision, and that means having clear lines of authority.
.. 4. An orderly policy-development process. It is critical that there be a system for providing the president with the essential information and options required to make decisions on key issues.
.. It may be difficult to stop this president from tweeting, but at a minimum he needs to tweet based on a policy process managed by the chief of staff.
.. 5. Telling the president the truth. There has to be one person in the White House willing to look the president in the eye and tell him the truth — to tell him when he is wrong and when he is about to make a mistake — and that has to be the chief of staff.
.. No president likes to be told he is wrong. However, to be successful, all presidents have to accept the reality that they are not always right.
.. Whether President Trump is willing to make these changes will in large measure determine not just how long Kelly survives as chief of staff, but also the ultimate success or failure of Trump’s administration.
President Donald Trump’s New Inner Circle
the shake-up amplifies a pattern of Mr. Trump’s when it comes to filling leadership positions: he places an outsize value on the opinion of those who have served in the U.S. armed forces, even if he lacks a longstanding relationship with them. Mr. Kelly said he had never met the president, nor did he know anyone who knew him, before he was offered the job as homeland security secretary shortly after the 2016 election.
.. Asked if high-profile aides such as Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner would also report to Mr. Kelly, Ms. Sanders said the new hierarchy “includes everybody at the White House.”