20 years with respect to russia. mitt romney, bun of the big debates he had with barack obama is he thought the democrats weren t tough enough on russia. so during his campaign, trump re- he changed the party s position on this issue and in office, he has taken a series of moves that are more accommodating towards russia than other republican presidents would have been. i think mueller is seeing all of that and saying, huh, is there a connection here? that s one of the big questions of this investigation. to the white house s point that, hey, we ve been very tough on russia, i think most foreign policy analysts don t see it that way. they see him grudgingly accepting nato. nato is the sort of cornerstone of american security, and it toox mont took months and lots of back and forth before trump would affirmaffirm himself to nato. that caused a lot of concern in europe, to the benefit of putin. they haven t been able to
our core values. on that point it was a big decision to be willing to have this meeting but it didn t reflect any relenting in our economic pressure and military deterrents towards north korea. the one place where more creative analysis might be needed by the trump administration is what kind of deal would we accept? if you insist on complete north korean denuclearization as the first deal you are not going to get it. 90% of foreign policy analysts would agree with me. you should hope for that and insist on that as the long-term goal. as an interim deal a freeze on their production and testing of nuclear materials and long-range missiles is the realistic strategy. you can let up u.n. sanctions and keep the u.s. sanctions. you don t pay too high a price for that. it s the kind of flexible deal we need. otherwise it will be a
china just about what it does with north korea or do we have a separate policy with china? developed a very good relationship, the power to do something with north korea and we will see what happens. that said we are prepared for anything. we are prepared like you wouldn t believe. you would be shocked to see how totally prepared we are if we need to be. would it be nice not to do that? will that happened? who knows. julie: president travels to asia on his first trip to the region since taking office and is expected to press china to do more to reign in pyongyang. the foreign policy analysts at carnegie mellon university at the hoover institution.
european countries are so suspicious of us in our foreign policy. we have always been able to lean on the u.k. as a sort of backstop of u.s. support abroad. but the more important thing here and i have talked to foreign policy analysts that like a lot of the policies that they re seeing out of the trump administration, but say that a key thing missing is the president s rhetoric. the president s rhetoric has not caught up to his policies to give further explanation so that there is more leadership coming from him to affect these policies. the other thing is when he badgers other countries this way via twitter or any other way, what he does is he creates a problem for his own policy. because these countries have their own domestic constituencies, their own voters, and so what the president did this morning with regard to london causes theresa may a problem. and she s supposed to be one of his closest allies in the region. while the president is using this for his own domestic purposes,
those questions. richard, what we did hear was a very carefully crafted message from the secretary of defense which really ramped up the rhetoric against north korea, making it very clear there are a number of military options that they have prepared that the president is potentially considering again based on my conversations as a last resort. look at the messaging out of the white house today, richard, as well. you have the president taking aim at south korea. the united states closest ally in the region, effectively accusing south korea of appease m. why is that significant? because it comes as the president is considering the possibility of scrapping a trade deal with south korea. something a lot of foreign policy analysts say would be the absolute worst timing, but this could be trying to strong arm areas in the region to get tougher from north korea. they want to see that with china, south korea, japan. they also want russia to choke