«We’re not going to be played.»
This should make you feel (a little) better if you’re worried that he’s going to get rolled at his summit with Kim, a reasonable fear given his habit of trying to please whichever audience he’s in front of at a given moment. The counterpressure in that situation is the specter of Obama: If he gives away the farm, he’ll be attacked savagely by critics for having made a deal as bad as the one the U. S. made with Iran three years ago. To Trump, an unfavorable comparison with his predecessor is one of the worst insults you can throw at him. If he gets suckered, he’ll wear the scarlet “O” forever and he knows it.
Then again, given prior practices with immigration and gun control, he might promise Kim the world during their meeting, confer with his advisors afterward, and then renounce 90 percent of what he just promised.
Stephen Hayes gently suggests we keep the champagne on ice until there’s an actual agreement:
If the president thinks Kim is “very honorable” based on what he’s seeing, then he’s not seeing clearly.
Equally worrisome was Trump’s Twitter declaration that the North Koreans have agreed to do what they’ve refused to do for decades. “We haven’t given up anything & they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!” What Kim Jong-un actually said was different. He declared that his country would suspend tests on its weapons during talks and, crucially, that there was no need for such tests because North Korea had achieved its objective of nuclear weapons capability…
The danger of a Trump-Kim summit is that the president will trumpet whatever Kim offers as a historic triumph. But promises are not victories. And the moment Trump announces a victory, he creates a bad set of incentives for policing whatever deal is struck. If the meeting itself is portrayed as a win, and flimsy North Korean commitments are hailed as successes, any recognition of subsequent problems will threaten to diminish the president’s accomplishment.
Pessimism usually pays; that’s my motto. But if you’re looking for reasons to feel optimistic, consider that the extreme nature of North Korea’s personality cult may make favorable longshot outcomes more likely. That is to say, if Kim decides that he enjoys being liked by Moon Jae-in and POTUS more than he does being feared by them, maybe that’s enough to open up North Korea to new possibilities. It’s a Stalinist state. His personal whim is law. There’s zero chance that Kim will destroy his weapons since they’re his insurance policy against foreign attempts at regime change, but would he agree to mothball them and submit to close inspections in exchange for sanctions being lifted and formal recognition by the U. S.? We’ve been down that road (or one like it) before only to have the North reverse course, but I don’t know what the alternatives are from a western perspective. If denuclearization “is a process, not an event,” then the process begins with giving Kim a taste of what better relations with the rest of the world might do for him and his country. It probably won’t work and he’ll double down on Juche insanity in the next few years, with a horrendous war to follow, but again, what other options are there right now? It’s a hostage situation. You either kick in the door and start shooting or you try to convince the bad guy that it’s in his interest somehow not to kill everyone.
Exit quotation from… Chris Cuomo(!): “President Obama got a Nobel Peace award for a lot less.”
. @POTUS: «The United States in the past was played like a fiddle.» pic.twitter.com/HxjoYszxJi
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) April 27,2018
