Thomas Lee was quoted in Newsweek regarding the ongoing conflict between the United States and North Korea.
“For all the differences in the three different administrations, it’s kind of interesting to see how they all end up at the same place and maybe that will happen with these guys too,” Thomas H. Lee, professor of International Law at Fordham University and a former Naval intelligence officer, told Newsweek.
…
Lee said that because of Trump’s “somewhat unhinged, off the cuff rhetoric,” North Korea, China and Russia actually believe a military strike on the North is possible, which in turn led the two other superpowers to agree to the most recent United Nations’ sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime. That’s a kind of power or leverage Obama’s administration didn’t necessarily possess or effectively convey.
And yet both Obama and Bush had choice words for Kim and his father, Kim Jong Il, within the last 15 years. Obama at first took a “conciliatory” route, according to Lee, with the North but ultimately returned to sanctions and tough talk.