Ahead of US President Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, one experienced diplomat at the Brookings Institution gives some advice on preparing for the summit.
WASHINGTON: Serious foreign policy analysts and veterans – who all wish the US president understood the value of alliances, diplomacy, a coordinated decision-making process, coherent public explanations of policy and history – need to accept the reality that Donald Trump will be president for the next several years.
Decisions will continue to be made as if the White House were producing a reality TV show, with upcoming blockbusters like the Kim Jong Un bonanza unrolled with little serious preparation.
We can bemoan this, Americans can be embarrassed by it and launch their own broadsides at it. Many will be right, and most of it richly deserved. But to what end?
READ: A commentary on the amateurish process behind the US president’s spontaneous decision to meet with Kim Jong Un.
How should responsible critics of US President Donald Trump react to the seriously flawed initiative for the US president to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un?
I would offer nine specific suggestions for how to make it work passably and how to minimise the risks.
MEET THOSE WITH EXPERIENCE
First, even though Trump has made clear that he thinks every US president before him has been a catastrophic failure on North Korea, there is actually a lot to be learned from previous North Korea negotiations.
He should meet with former officials with extensive experience in negotiating directly with North Korea – including Robert Gallucci, Christopher Hill, Glyn Davies, Danny Russel, and Wendy Sherman.
Second, he should meet with the senior-most officials in previous administrations who wrestled with the North Korean nuclear issue – namely Bill Perry, Bob Gates, Robert Zoellick, Steve Hadley and Leon Panetta.
Additionally, he should meet with America’s senior foreign policy statesmen who did not deal with the North Korean nuclear issue, because it arose after their time, but who bring lifetimes of experience confronting war and peace issues – namely Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Brent Scowcroft.
(A normal president would also see the enormous value in meeting with the former presidents and secretaries of state who have overseen the North Korean issue over the last 30 years, but given this president’s disdain for all of them, this is probably a bridge too far.)
Such meetings should be occasions for genuine contributions by these statesmen, not televised reality shows or photo ops.
UNDERSTAND NORTH KOREA’S CAPABILITIES
Third, Trump needs to understand the realities of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and ambitions, and he can best learn these from scientists who have seen the programme.
He should meet with Siegfried Hecker, who has visited North Korean facilities more often than any foreigner (and is former head of Los Alamos laboratory), David Albright and the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
