What is the price of stability?

Show him the map

Dan Rather

What is the price of stability? 

For a business man who boasts constantly about his intelligence, President Trump seems to have a lot to learn about cost benefit analysis.

I know someone had to show him a map to make him understand the implications of pulling out of NAFTA.

So maybe someone can show him a map (other than his new favorite foreign policy advisor Xi Jinping, the president of China!) to explain the predicament our friends in South Korea find themselves.

Sabre rattling and blustery talk against North Korea may make a President who approaches 100 days in office with a string of failures feel like he's the type of tough leader he promised during the campaign, but it doesn't add up to a coherent foreign policy.

And when that is followed by messages about mixed as James Bond's martini, the anxiety in Seoul only intensifies.

Now Mr. Trump suggested that the South Koreans pay a billion dollars for a U.S. missile defense system. And then he slammed a trade deal between the two countries.

The South Koreans have become valued allies over the years. They live within artillery range of a massive North Korean army.

So they have enough to worry about without Mr. Trump deciding that they now seem to be part of the problem.