CALCULATED RISK

In July 1971, President Richard Nixon jolted the international status quo — and set diplomatic nerves worldwide luttering — by announcing he would visit China. “Never in history, to our knowledge, have diplomatic relations progressed so fast from the Ping-pong table to the Presidency,” this page breathlessly observed. Nixon’s bold overture reshaped the modern world and has paid vast dividends to Washington, to Beijing and to the general stability of global geopolitics. Now another potentially seismic diplomatic event takes shape: President Donald Trump plans to clink glasses with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Yes, the same dictator Trump taunted on Twitter as “Little Rocket Man.” Trump hopes to strike a deal with the North Korean leader to relinquish his nuclear weapons arsenal. What could go wrong? Just about everything, critics say. Sceptics carp that Kim wins a huge propaganda bonanza just by sitting down with the West’s leader without irst promising concessions in return. But Trump is taking a smart calculated risk. The main reason is that Trump doesn’t have any better options to resolve this conundrum without military action. Several decades of patient American diplomacy, from the Clinton administration in the 1990s through those of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, failed to achieve the key goal: to prevent North Korea from threatening the US and the world with nuclear weapons. Kim now has up to 60, and he is intent on building more. He also has ballistic missiles that could hit US cities, including Chicago, with a nuclear payload.