My Twitter thread unroll from July 26:

North Korea routinely goes through their gyrations until they are actually “ready” to negotiate. Until that point, they are immersed in their internal processes. They accommodate or adjust to no one until they evaluate they are ready.

Recall NK even postponed their June 2000 summit with Kim Dae Jung for a day without explanation. They just weren’t ready even though observers worried SK would get stiffed and the summit would get canceled. Remember July 27 is “Victory Day” for NK and it’s not surprising to see a military provocation and heated rhetoric in the run-up.

Far more than an invasion, NK fears being ignored by the U. S.  And with Trump’s frequent preoccupations with the “latest” issue (that a friend tells him about), such as Sweden’s detention of a U. S. rapper, it’s an even greater challenge for the North to keep Trump’s attention.

But no matter who is American president, NK knows that to be ignored by the U.S., to not have the undivided U. S. attention, is to be virtually dead politically. It’s not just about increasing leverage; it’s about avoiding being a political non-entity.

North Korean regime dynamics are definitely not well understood. Even when we think we understand, we judge based on our own values and perspective, not theirs. In the early ’50s, Nathan Leites wrote about the “operational code” of Soviet leaders. But NK is something else again.♦