Experts: Prez should keep calm, carry on
Despite North Korean rhetoric, Trump should stay course
WASHINGTON — North Korea’s abrupt about-face, balking at U.S. terms of denuclearization and threatening to scuttle a planned summit with President Trump, was a dramatic if not unexpected turn of events, experts said.
The U.S. still has plenty of room to salvage negotiations, however, if the president can resist the urge to go back to the incendiary “fire and fury” rhetoric and instead proceed with caution.
But the events of the last two days serve as a key lesson for the White House: dealing with Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials is not as easy as Trump made it seem.
“President Trump has been overselling the progress we are making in terms of North Korea,” said Jon Wolfsthal, director of the Nuclear Crisis Group, a group of diplomatic, military and national security experts from 10 nucleararmed allied countries. “The idea that we were going to rapidly solve this problem because of his unique negotiating skills was never credible.”
Wolfsthal added: “We can still make real progress.”
The key, is to “keep calm and carry on,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonprofit Arms Control Association.
Trump’s actions yesterday were a good start, experts said. Hours after North Korea blasted “one-sided” efforts to pressure it to abandon its nuclear program, and specifically called out comments made by national security adviser John Bolton for seeking an outcome similar to Libya, Trump played it down.
“We haven’t seen anything, we haven’t heard anything,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We will see what happens.” Trump also refrained from tweeting about the setback.
The U.S. and South Korea “need to continue to work toward summit preparations,” Kimball said.
Trump and his supporters should tamp down their boasting about potentially reaching a North Korean deal that eluded his predecessors, or publicly campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, they should focus on attainable goals — such as seeking a rollback of North Korean nuclear capabilities along with a clear plan of how to monitor those efforts.
“President Trump needs to be much more circumspect about what this summit can accomplish,” Kimball said.
Wolfsthal said the only way forward now is to pursue the dual goals of direct negotiations and deterrent measures to prevent North Korea from accelerating its nuclear ambitions.
Added Wolfsthal: “There is no military solution to this, and we have to guard against Trump’s personal frustration leading to an accidental conflict.”