While Trump was distracted, North Korea calmed down. Thats not a coincidence.
by Zack Beauchamp at Vox
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/15/16150412/trump-north-korea-charlottesville
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While President Trump was engaged in an uncomfortable dance around condemning white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, North Korea quietly walked back a threat to launch missiles in the direction of American bases on Guam.
That’s no coincidence. Experts think this deescalation — what analyst Robert Carlin calls “a decisive break in the action” — happened in part because the president’s focus has been on Charlottesville since Friday night.
“The media (and the president) was distracted over the weekend, which gave some breathing space for the situation,” Jenny Town, the assistant director of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins, tells me.
That’s because Trump’s own statements — such as his vow to respond to threats from Pyongyang with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” — were partly to blame for the increased tensions between the two countries. But as soon as the Charlottesville story broke, Trump stopped talking about North Korea. And sure enough, things calmed down almost immediately.
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