KEEP TRUMP AT HOME
U.S. President Donald Trump has agreed to a face-to-face meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. What could go wrong? Just everything. For example: Trump, an explicit admirer of global thugs, is duped into a deal that sees him agree to withdraw American troops from the Korean Peninsula in exchange for Kim ending the North’s nuclear weapons program. Trump tweets his satisfaction and flies home. The North’s nuclear program continues, under cover and unabated.
Or: Trump arrives at the summit believing Kim is going to halt nuclearization permanently, only to discover that “Little Rocket Man” has no such intent. Both stomp off in a fury, bad relations plummet further, and Trump twitchily eyes his own nuclear button.
Such grim scenarios are possible when an unschooled president, with little Korean expertise among his close advisers, abruptly agrees to participate in such a diplomatic drama despite months of public denunciations and steadily tightening sanctions. No sitting U.S. president has ever met face-to-face with a North Korean leader.
With good reason. The so-called Hermit Kingdom is a brutal tyranny and its leaders have sought reunification with the South on terms that would do nothing to boost liberal democracy or global stability. Its government orchestrated the poisoning of the president’s own brother in Kuala Lumpur. It arrested an American for theft, then sent him home in a vegetative state (he died soon after). It imprisoned a Canadian pastor on a humanitarian mission for more than two years.
One day its dictatorship will crumble, but meanwhile it threatens both its neighbours and North America. Yet a Trump-Kim tête-à-tête isn’t the solution. The U.S. sent former president Jimmy Carter — a man of both sharp intellect and considerable patience — to North Korea three times to try to stop nuclearization. He failed. Of course, he was not a sitting president, and Kim craves the prestige of meeting the White House occupant personally.
There’s precedent for international grand gestures: Nixon went to China, after all. But that experienced politician didn’t do so before careful groundwork was meticulously laid by experts, officials, diplomats and other countries (including Canada). Expectations were realistic.
High-level summits can go horribly wrong — even between countries not at war: Observe Justin Trudeau’s recent stumbles in India, or his failure to impress the Chinese earlier this year.
Trump was not ready for the presidency; he is certainly not ready for life-and-death diplomacy in which the fallout — literally — could change the world. America, please keep him at home.