Some context for Donald Trump's latest North Korea tweets.

Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

...hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

Just a quick note about Donald Trump's latest tweets on North Korea. Many in the media are, predictably freaking out. That is typical as they would freak out if Donald Trump said the sky was blue, but in this case is it more justified? After all it looks, on the surface, that Trump is arguing that diplomacy won't work with North Korea.  Does that mean war will happen?

I seriously doubt it. For me it was always obvious what Donald Trump was doing. He's taking a page out of Richard Nixon's playbook. During the Vietnam War, Nixon used the "Madman Theory" to force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. Nixon allowed the media and his government agencies look like he had a screw loose and that he was irrational in order to intimidate the Vietnamese into believing a major escalation is likely if they don't negotiation. He backed that up with several large bombing campaigns that convinced the North Vietnamese government that they had to come to some kind of settlement.

And the thing of it is that it worked! The Vietnamese were scared of Nixon and they did decide to agree to our terms. We still lost the war but that had everything to do with Nixon resigning and Gerald Ford not keeping Nixon's promises.

I think it is very clear that this is what is happening now. While Trump is posting things like the above tweets and cryptically warning that this is the "calm before the storm" his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson is working hard to open up communications with North Korea. America clearly isn't abandoning diplomacy and even though Trump is tweeting like this, I don't believe for a second that he isn't doing anything besides trying to convince the North Koreans that they should listen to Tillerson.

So is this strategy working? I am not sure. There is some evidence that the North Koreans have no idea what to think of President Trump, even going so far as to try and get in touch with GOP organizations to get a handle on him. That tells me that they are negotiating from a position of weakness and will probably cave eventually. They don't really want to risk a war either and I doubt they can take the risk that Trump really isn't using the Madman Theory as likely as it is.

On the other hand, that reading relies on North Korea being rational. My reading is that all of their actions have been rational as well and they are going with their own version of Madman Theory, trying to intimidate Trump and his foreign allies. But given how sheltered and spoiled Kim Jong Un is, there is a chance that he really is crazy, in which case things could go bad.

That being said, I think the saber rattling on both sides is exactly that. It's a lot of sound and fury that doesn't signify much while the real work is being done by the diplomats. Both Trump and Kim Jong Un know exactly what they are doing and the only real difference now is that nobody is used to having such an assertive US president. I would still put money down on their being no actual war with North Korea anytime soon...