The art of the deal
Which are you—skeptic or believer?
SAFE judgments are hard to come by at this delicate stage of the diplomatic game being played by both Koreas while the rest of the world watches warily. Count our own dealmaker-in-chief, Donald J. Trump, among the optimists with a reservation or three. On this occasion our usually impulsive president made the safest of observations: “We are a long way from conclusion on North Korea, maybe things will work out, and maybe they won’t—only time will tell. But the work
I’m doing now should have been done a long time ago.”
Even while making the most cautious of comments, it seems as if our president can’t resist promoting himself. Or stooping to respond to a critic like NBC’s Chuck Todd, who said that “we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea, and they have given up nothing.”
“Wow,” the president had to add, “we haven’t given up anything & they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!” Self-respect is one thing; self-adoration and constant self-rationalization quite another and much lesser phenomenon, common as it is. As in cheap and widespread.
The president’s comments lack not only self-respect but respect for the generations of American diplomats who have wrestled with the challenge of how to deal with a hermetic regime that’s needed changing for decades. “Funny,” President Trump tweeted, “how all of the Pundits that couldn’t come close to making a deal on North Korea are now all over the place telling me how to make a deal!” It’s an old and sad disproportion: The smaller the man, the bigger the ego. Now he’s claiming big progress and saying he looks forward to his summit with North Korea’s leaders next month or maybe the month after.
Washington would do well to take its cue from Seoul, which has suspended its propaganda broadcasts across the border to Pyongyang in anticipation of a formal peace agreement that would seal the informal one that seems to be budding faster than the holdouts can bear to recognize. This won’t be the firstever mini-summit, but the third. This one, however, may promise to bear real results rather than a fast-passing mirage bearing only a faint resemblance to lasting peace.
All good things, they say, come to those who wait. But waiting is not a mere passive posture. It can be an active preparation for sowing real results, not just more illusions that begin fading as soon as they’re conceived.
Marc Short, legislative director at the White House, says that when it comes to North Korea, the mood within the circle of presidential advisers is one of “cautious optimism.” Probably more cautious than optimistic if past experience with the regime in Pyongyang proves but a preface to future performance.
Americans have been disappointed so many times in their expectations for improvement in the North Korean picture, it’s a wonder the country can still muster any hope for improvement. And yet a basically hopeful people is not about to give up on peace no matter how many times those hopes may be dashed. If at first a determined nation doesn’t succeed, then it’ll likely try and try again. And this time the goal appears within grasp. Why drop the ball now, when the goal line seems so near?
OPINIONS will differ, as they often do in a democracy. But there’s no good reason for public opinion in this country to be as monolithic as in North Korea, where one official opinion suffices to cover all.
Bob Corker, the sage senator from neighboring Tennessee who’s chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, says the North Korean leader has put on a “great public-relations effort” to win our president’s favor. But does it have substance?
“Well,” continues Senator Corker, “I don’t think he said anything about denuclearizing on the front end necessarily.” And it’s unrealistic to expect that anybody, including a president of the United States, is “going to go in and charm” a wily customer like North Korea’s Comrade Kim, who said nothing “about denuclearizing on the front end necessarily.”
Goodness, that single statement has more reservations than any good-sized Holiday Inn. “But, you know,” Senator Corker went on, “progress can be made freezing [Kim Jong Un’s nuclear] program, who knows what his ambitions are as it relates to South Korea.”
So let’s hope peace and not just nuclear strategy is on his ever-cagey mind. And let’s keep the good thought and our powder dry.