Trump must talk to North Korea

Donald Trump’s promise to meet North Korea’s nuclear threat with “fire and fury” has fizzled and flopped.

Last Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un answered the bombastic American president with the equivalent of a nuclear-tipped middle finger.

Kim’s regime tested what it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb that could be fitted into an intercontinental ballistic missile — of the sort it fired off earlier this year and which could strike North America.

Just five days before that powerful underground blast, North Korea sent an intermediate-range missile flying over the Japanese island of Hokkaido, where authorities sounded sirens and urged terrified residents to seek shelter.

So much for Trump’s huffing and puffing at the start of last month. He drew a line in the sand. Kim repeatedly, defiantly, crossed it while the U.S. did nothing of substance.

The situation is grave and the entire world could sleep more safely at night if Kim’s megalomaniacal craving for nuclear bombs were thwarted.

But Trump’s attempt to deter this ambition by flexing his military muscles has failed.

U.S.-led economic sanctions have proven equally ineffective.

What to do with North Korea would tax a greater mind and a wiser statesman than Trump.

In reality, however, he has three remaining options, all of which are imperfect and no guarantee of success.

He can do nothing. He can respond with force. Or he can talk to Kim.

As repugnant as it may be, the only sane option for Trump is to negotiate with this isolated, paranoid and ruthless despot.

The option of a pre-emptive strike is madness and could quickly result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea, which would surely become a target for a furious Kim. Japan is vulnerable, too.

While a limited, regional war would be hugely destructive, there is a possibility it could escalate and drag in China, a reluctant but steadfast ally of North Korea.

The prospect of World War Three, while remote, is no fantasy.

At the same time, the option of doing nothing while North Korea barges ahead with its ever-growing nuclear program is equally unacceptable.

Kim has destabilized a vast region of the Pacific. The people of South Korea and Japan must be neither his pawns nor victims.

As hard as it may be, the Americans need to negotiate with the North Korean regime.

Kim is unpredictable, cruel and egotistical. He is not, however, a madman.

Rather, he has concluded from the foreign interventions in Iraq and Libya that dictators who run afoul of the U.S. can wind up dead. From those examples, Kim has concluded he needs nuclear weapons to stay alive.

Somehow, the United States — hopefully with China’s help — must convince Kim he can remain as leader but without any new nuclear toys.

The great British statesman Winston Churchill got it right when he said, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

Trump is no Churchill. But can the president learn even this elementary lesson?

John Roe