CONFRONTING NORTH KOREA – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  Our new secretary of state is in Japan, and has spoken words that have needed to be spoken for years:  our policy toward North Korea has failed.  From The New York Times: 

TOKYO — At a time of multiplying tensions in Asia, Rex W. Tillerson, the American secretary of state, began his first major foreign trip in Japan and said on Thursday that the United States needed a “different approach” to North Korea’s escalating nuclear threat, though he declined to give specifics.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo after talks with Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, Mr. Tillerson said that “the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearization have failed,” noting that during those 20 years, the United States had provided $1.35 billion in assistance to North Korea to encourage it to abandon its nuclear program.

“Part of the purpose of my visit to the region is to exchange views on a new approach,” Mr. Tillerson added, saying he would highlight the issue in Seoul and Beijing, the next stops on his trip.

On the eve of President Trump sending a federal budget to Congress that proposes a 29 percent cut in the State Department’s budget, Mr. Tillerson, who took questions only from reporters who had been preselected by one of his press advisers, said he would take on the challenge of the cutbacks “willingly.”

“The level of spending that the State Department has been undertaking, particularly in the past year, is simply not sustainable,” Mr. Tillerson said, explaining that current spending reflected the “level of conflicts that the U.S. has been engaged in around the world as well as disaster assistance.”

COMMENT:  It's nice to see a Cabinet officer who doesn't whine about budget cuts to his department, but sees them as a welcome challenge.

On North Korea, Tillerson is dead on.  Everything we've tried has failed.   The situation is ominous.  North Korea not only goes on developing weapons of mass destruction, but there are indications that the country is exporting that technology to willing buyers. 

Tillerson is right to go to east Asia first to hear the opinions of our allies before developing new strategies.

March 16,  2017