Tillerson cuts teeth on the Korean peninsula: Stuart McMillan comments on the recent visit to South Korea by the new US secretary of state.

• Author: McMillan, Stuart

Seeking to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula has dogged a number of United States administrations. During his recent visit to South Korea, the new secretary of state outlined a different approach and talked of a military option. His basic approach was that the era of 'strategic patience' was over, meaning that there would be no more coaxing of North Korea to give up its development of nuclear weaponry by offers of aid, money or engagement in talks. He also said that all options, including military ones, were on the table. But in reality the options for dealing with North Korea are limited.

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After Rex Tillerson's March trip to Asia to address the North Korea crisis, the world has a better sense of the style and work methods of the secretary of state, a confirmed suspicion of how the White House will pursue foreign policy objectives and still no new idea of how it will deal with North Korea. The depth of the crisis is plain; the consequences of getting it wrong unthinkable.

By the time Tillerson arrived in Asia the annual military exercises, called Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, between South Korea and United States forces were already under way, accompanied, as they had been in other years, by various threats and protests from North Korea. Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader of North Korea, as the nation likes him to be known, appeared to protest more vigorously and his threats seemed more credible. The sinking of the South Korean Navy's corvette Cheonan, almost certainly by North Korea, occurred in 2010, long before Kim Jong Un became supreme leader, but it reinforced the belief that North Korea would go to extreme lengths if it could get away with it. At least four missiles were launched from North Korea, close to simultaneously, just before Tillerson arrived, some landing within 320 kilometres of Japan. During 2016 North Korea conducted two nuclear tests, and there has been considerable speculation that the country is on the brink of being able to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be mounted on a missile. In addition, North Korea may now be able to propel its rockets with solid fuel, rather than liquid fuel, a technical advance that would make the preparation for the launching of any missile much harder to detect. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimates that in 2014 North Korea had ten nuclear bombs. (1)

The paths of the multiple rockets were tracked by various people, not all with military connections, and found to be on a trajectory for a US military base in Japan. The Tillerson visit also coincided with the death of Kim Jong Un's half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was assassinated in Malaysia with an internationally-banned nerve agent VX, another incident for which North Korea was blamed and seems the only likely suspect.

One does not have to have a whit of sympathy for the Trump administration and its flounderings to acknowledge that if you are going to be dropped into a foreign policy dilemma, the Korean Peninsula is hardly something to cut your teeth on. So how did Tillerson do? He seems to...