Trump’s gamble: Meeting Kim shatters orthodoxy
CALCULATED RISK? He would be the first sitting US president ever to meet with a N Korean leader
Donald Trump took the biggest gamble of his presidency, breaking decades of US diplomatic orthodoxy by accepting an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The bet is that Trump’s campaign to apply maximum economic pressure on Kim’s regime has forced him to consider what was previously unthinkable: surrendering the illicit nuclear weapons programme begun by his father. If Trump is right, the US would avert what appeared last year to be a steady march toward a second Korean War.
It was classic Trump, showing an unerring confidence to get the better end of any negotiation. But it was also Trump in another way: high risk and high reward, with little regard for those in the foreign policy establishment who worry it’s too much, too soon.
“He’s taking a risk,” said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “By seizing an opportunity for a summit meeting, a decision that would have taken much more time in another administration, the president has said, ‘I’m going to go right now. And we’re going to test this.”’
There is no protocol for Trump to follow or guidebook for him to fall back on: he would be the first sitting US president ever to meet with a North Korean leader.
Regardless of how it turns out, the stunning decision by Trump hands Kim a prize long sought by the regime’s ruling dynasty: the legitimacy conferred by a historic meeting with the sitting president. So much could go wrong. Kim’s proposal may be a ruse to buy time for North Korea’s weapons programme to develop fur- ther and to undermine sanctions.
The summit might collapse, leaving Trump looking hapless and escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula.
It’s a startling turnabout for two leaders who have spent the past year trading personal insults. Trump called Kim “Little Rocket Man” and threatened to rain “fire and fury” on his regime.
Kim maligned Trump as a “dotard” while demonstrating that his nuclear programme had overcome earlier technical hurdles. The turn of events will bleed attention from Trump’s domestic political troubles, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s continuing Russia probe and porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit alleging an affair with the president.
And the announcement came on a day when Trump had already toppled a pillar of US policy dogma, breaking the longstanding commitment to freer trade by imposing stiff tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.
Trump and his team recognise the possibility that Kim’s outreach is not in good faith or is some sort of ploy, an administration official said. But the US president’s advisers believe that if the US continues to exert maximum pressure on Pyongyang as the summit approaches, Kim may be forced to make real concessions even if he enters talks thinking he can avoid them.
The president stressed Kim would gain no immediate relief in a Twitter post shortly after the meeting was announced. “Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached,” Trump wrote.
Trump reached out to regional leaders, speaking by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, White House officials said.