Olivia Troye, a former President Donald Trump national-security official who publicly warned about threats during his first administration, is sounding the alarm again.
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Troye, who worked on national security and homeland security issues at the Department of Defense and the National Counterterrorism Center, flagged the new move by Trump around the Korean Peninsula.
Trump announced that he was making annual war games with South Korea significantly smaller than in previous years because he believes they’re unnecessary given his positive relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Troye said she could remember during the first Trump administration “when the White House feared North Korea could directly threaten the homeland. I watched countless hours go into preparing and protecting Americans.”
During Trump’s first term, he would frequently threaten Kim on social media, claiming he’d face “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” He insulted Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and warned that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” for a full conflict with North Korea. In fact, when Trump delivered a speech to the United Nations in 2017, he threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if it ever threatened the U.S. or its allies.
Then, as Trump described it, “we fell in love,” as the two exchanged “love letters.” Those letters were obtained by Bob Woodward for his book on Trump and CNN published two of them, showing Kim’s affinity for referring to Trump as “Your Excellency.”
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Trump’s diplomatic efforts failed, and North Korea accelerated its missile program. Today, he has roughly 60 nuclear weapons and weapons that can reach the U.S.
Troye noted that “Now Trump is cutting military exercises with South Korea while boasting about Kim Jong Un.” It prompted her to wonder, “Are we really back to love letters?”
Writing for the New York Times this week, David E. Sanger and Anton Troianovski noted that as Trump continues to lose his war with Iran, he’s turning instead to “a familiar foe,” North Korea. That said, “analysts see little hope of quickly dismantling that country’s growing nuclear arsenal,” the report explained.
It’s an odd contrast, said Robert Litwak, a scholar at George Washington University, who writes about nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
“We’re at war with Iran, a nuclear-threshold state,” Litwak said. “But with North Korea, we are placating a dictator who can target the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons.”
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