President Trump goes to North Korea’s neighborhood in his first Asia trip as president. He will attempt a difficult balance: looking for help facing down that nation’s nuclear ambitions while also seeking trade concessions from China, Japan and South Korea.
Nearly three months after threatening to destroy North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” President Trump is getting a firsthand look at the nations most at risk from the nuclear brinkmanship, and hearing from leaders on their own soil.
During nine days in Asia, Trump will go within 35 miles of North Korea, the long-isolated nation governed by the mysterious and volatile Kim Jong Un, whose nuclear ambitions have been the most pressing national security concern of Trump’s term.
“North Korea is going to be the question that is on everyone’s mind,” said Michael J. Green, an Asia analyst in the George W. Bush administration, now senior vice president for Asia and Japan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That’s for good reason, Green continued: “The North Koreans are rushing towards the end zone — towards the goal line of getting nuclear warheads that can be mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles, launched at the U. S., survive reentry into the atmosphere, and then blow up somewhere.”
Trump, who leaves Hawaii for the region on Saturday, will visit five nations: Japan, South Korea and China — the three with the most at stake regarding North Korea — as well as Vietnam and the Philippines. It is a tour that will require him to perform a perhaps impossible balancing act: seeking more help, especially from China, in pressuring North Korea while also pressing for trade concessions.
Trump’s national security advisor, H. R. McMaster, said the president would carry a blunt message, about North Korea in particular.
“China recognizes this isn’t the United States or anyone else asking China to do us a favor,” he said. “China recognizes it is clearly in China’s interest and all nations‘ interest to denuclearize the peninsula.”
Trump’s first trip to the region as president will include not only talks with foreign leaders on security and trade, but also lavish state dinners, opulent ceremonies and at least one round of golf-course diplomacy.
Because Trump’s itinerary includes several summits that draw additional nations’ heads of state, there may be a few wild cards, including a potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin — at a time when a special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russian meddling in the U. S. election has yielded its first indictments of Trump associates.
Trump is scheduled to meet with another controversial leader, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. The two have “a warm rapport,” an administration official said, though Duterte stands accused of allowing death squads to kill more than 6,000 people in his government’s war on drugs.
The trip is Trump’s fourth abroad as president and perhaps the toughest test yet of his acumen on a world stage before foreign leaders skeptical of his leadership, confused by his mixed messages and worried about his impulsive behavior.
Asia trips are famously grueling, given the long flights and time difference. Add to that Trump’s age, 71, his preference for his own bed, and his concern with the ongoing investigation at home. The last president to spend so many days on an Asian journey, George H.
