Schism in the Deep State: Pentagon at Odds With White House and State Department Over Korea

The Pentagon appears to be openly at odds with the White House and the State Department. That's how American media reacted to the launch of the largest US-South Korea joint air combat drills in history. Pyongyang was quick to label the drills a provocation, and North Korea's TV said that the US-North Korea summit was now canceled. With Trump keeping silent on Twitter, his press secretary had to take over in Washington. Sarah Sanders tried to convince the news media that the historic handshake in Singapore would happen after all. Anastasiya Sakhovskaya will take it from here. Thunder out of the blue skies. The Max Thunder US-South Korea air combat drills have shrouded the Korean Peninsula in clouds. New stealth fighters designed to hit missile and nuclear targets have not been hidden from North Korea's eyes. Pyongyang has already indignantly refused to talk to Seoul, and the summit with Trump is now under threat of cancellation. "The US government must think twice about the fate of the scheduled PDRK-US summit, because of the provocative actions against North Korea undertaken jointly with the government of South Korea". "Ranking White House and State Department officials, Including White House National Security Adviser John Bolton, insist on "denuclearization first, compensation later." This reveals a rather despicable plan to impose the sorry fate of Libya and Iraq on our distinguished Republic". Predictably, the State Department sees no problem. It said it had received no official information from Pyongyang. Ignoring a new aggravation in the North-South relations, Washington is blithely getting ready for the Singapore summit. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert: "They’re exercises that are legal; they’re planned well, well in advance. We have not heard anything to indicate that we would not continue conducting these exercises or that we wouldn't plan for our meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un". Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated this over the phone to South Korea's Foreign Minister. Seoul has promised Washington to get Pyongyang back to the negotiation table ASAP. South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun: "It is lamentable that the North is unilaterally postponing high-level inter-Korean talks". Yet there's no talk of stopping the saber-rattling next door to North Korea. Japan too considers these combat exercises peaceful and proposes to somehow continue both the drills and the dialog at the same time. Japan's Senior Vice Minister of Cabinet Office Yasutoshi Nishimura: "To maintain peace and security in the region, it's important to hold joint exercises at all times. We will continue our efforts to prepare for the US-North Korea summit". The terms of the declaration that prescribes the resolution of the Korean problem via dialog only have been assiduously fulfilled by Pyongyang. Kim Jong-un has promised to shut down a major nuclear weapons testing site, and those satellite photos show that the process has begun. Just ten days ago the North and South started living in the same time zone, and it's the North that turned its clocks 1/2 hour ahead. Yet North Korea is clearly not in a hurry, or willing to play catch-up alone. Now it's important to avoid a U-turn and to make sure the time spent to achieve such a fragile truce is not wasted in vain. Anastasiya Sakhovskaya, Mikhail Artyukhin, Vesti Asian Bureau.