TRUMP’S PUSH FOR JUNE 12 KEEPS ORGANIZERS BUSY

On Tuesday, news broke that a top North Korean official was headed to New York for an urgent meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had locked in a hastily arranged visit to the White House next week. Teams of U.S. negotiators, meanwhile, were already on the ground in the Korean demilitarized zone and in Singapore to nail down final arrangements with their North Korean counterparts for a possible summit in just two weeks.

The flurry of activity surrounding possible talks between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un appeared to be driven in large part by Trump’s fixation on keeping a June 12 date for the meeting — even though the president himself had abruptly called the whole thing off days earlier. In a series of tweets since then, Trump has suggested the summit will take place as scheduled in Singapore, even though his own advisers had warned last week it might be too late.

Trump’s latest change of direction was another sign that he has thrown out the conventional Washington playbook for his diplomatic high-wire act. From his impulsive, on-the-spot decision in March to accept Kim’s offer to meet, Trump has rushed headlong into an accelerated summit process that has led analysts to warn that he risks moving too quickly and setting himself up for failure.

“The pace of this stuff — it’s gone from the roller coaster ride of North Korea to the carnival ride The Scrambler,” said Bruce Klingner, a former U.S. intelligence official who serves as an Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation. “It’s dizzying. It throws off your inertia. At least a roller coaster is linear — The Scrambler is all directions at once.”