Trump’s Asia visit key amid tensions
10-day mission will address trade, security
WASHINGTON — Nearly three months after threatening to destroy North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” President Donald Trump is getting a firsthand look at the nations most at risk from the nuclear brinkmanship, and hearing from leaders on their own soil.
During 10 days in Asia, Trump will travel to within 35 miles of North Korea, the long-isolated nation led by the volatile Kim Jong Un, whose nuclear ambitions have been the most pressing nationalsecurity concern of Trump’s term.
“North Korea is going to be the question that is on everyone’s mind,” said Michael J. Green, an Asia analyst in the George W. Bush administration and now senior vice president for Asia and Japan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That’s for good reason, Green continued: “The North Koreans are rushing towards the end zone — towards the goal line of getting nuclear warheads that can be mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles, launched at the U.S., survive re-entry into the atmosphere, and then blow up somewhere.”
The president landed Friday in Hawaii, where he donned a lei, a wreath of flowers, after getting off of Air Force One with first lady Melania Trump. He greeted a group of people who were assembled for his arrival, signing autographs and giving highfives to kids.
He is scheduled to visit the U.S. Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the region. A key discussion topic likely will be the growing nuclear threat from North Korea, a crisis that will shadow Trump’s entire trip. He is then scheduled to take a boat tour of the USS Arizona Memorial and lay a wreath.
Trump, who leaves today for Tokyo, will visit five nations in the region: Japan, South Korea and China — the three with the most at stake regarding North Korea — as well as Vietnam and the Philippines. It is a tour that will require him to perform a perhaps impossible balancing act: seeking more help, especially from China, in pressuring North Korea while also pressing for trade concessions.
Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said the president would carry a blunt message, about North Korea in particular.
“China recognizes this isn’t the United States or anyone else asking China to do us a favor,” he said.
Trump’s first trip to the region as president will include not only talks with foreign leaders on security and trade, but also lavish state dinners, opulent ceremonies and at least one round of golf-course diplomacy.
“China recognizes it is clearly in China’s interest and all nations’ interest to denuclearize the peninsula.”
Trump’s first trip to the region as president will include not only talks with foreign leaders on security and trade, but also lavish state dinners, opulent ceremonies and at least one round of golf-course diplomacy.
Because Trump’s itinerary includes several summits that draw additional nations’ heads of state, there may be a few wild cards, including a potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time when a special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russian meddling in the U.S. election has yielded its first indictments of Trump associates.
Trump is scheduled to meet with another controversial leader, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. The two have “a warm rapport,” an administration official said, though Duterte stands accused of allowing death squads to kill more than 6,000 people in his government’s war on drugs.
The trip is Trump’s fourth abroad as president and perhaps the toughest test yet of his acumen on a world stage.
Asia trips are famously grueling, given the long flights and time difference. Trump’s age, 71, his preference for his own bed and his concern with the ongoing investigation at home may add to the toll.
Missteps could set off unintended consequences, especially considering Trump’s past war of words with North Korea’s Kim and that regime’s propensity to rattle its neighbors with nuclear and missile tests.
“If words are to count, the administration has boxed itself in, in very, very significant ways,” said Jonathan Pollack, a Brookings Institution scholar and former director of its China Center.
Asian leaders remain confused over Trump’s posture toward North Korea. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others have emphasized the administration’s desire for a diplomatic solution, though Trump has publicly declared that Tillerson was “wasting his time” talking to North Korea and insisted the United States is “locked and loaded” to confront it.
Asians “find him unpredictable,” said Wendy Cutler, who has led trade negotiations for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and is now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Despite concerns over Trump’s stamina on the long trip, he told reporters as he boarded Air Force One on Friday morning that he would add a day to his last stop in the Philippines, allowing him to attend the annual East Asia Summit.