Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump said to have strategy for despots
Aides: President shows strategy in his praise for authoritarian leaders
White House: Sympathetic words for world’s strongmen have a purpose.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he’d be “honored” to meet the North Korean despot Kim Jong Un. Egypt’s president, who allowed his opponents to be shot, is doing a “fantastic job.”
The president of the Philippines, who unleashed vigilante killings at home, is welcome at the White House. So is Thailand’s prime minister, who took power in a military coup. And Turkey’s president, who jailed thousands of opponents, got a congratulatory call.
This is not business as usual for U.S. presidents.
Trump’s advisers portray his public praise for foreign strongmen and his willingness to meet with ruthless dictators, without preconditions in most cases, as a way to shore up shaky alliances and possibly unlock longfrozen conflicts in Asia and the Middle East.
Trump, they say, believes he can use his personal charm and negotiating skills to forge ties to autocrats ostracized by previous presidents, and thus bring them to his way of thinking.
Critics say that outreach threatens to disrupt America’s long-standing strategic partnerships, undermines the credibility of U.S. democratic values overseas, and emboldens autocrats who use bloody measures at home to suppress dissent.
Trump spoke Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their third phone call since the November election and their first since U.S. warships launched cruise missiles at a Syrian air base April 6 to punish Russia’s major Middle East ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, for a nerve-gas attack that killed dozens of civilians.
In a statement, the White House described the conversation as “a very good one,” saying Trump and Putin discussed the war in Syria, including creation of safe zones, and the “best way to resolve the very dangerous situation in North Korea.”
The Kremlin later said the leaders also agreed to try to set up their first in-person meeting in July, on the sidelines of an international summit in Germany. The White House later confirmed that information.
Trump no longer publicly praises Putin as often or as effusively as he did during the campaign, but nor does he criticize him. U.S. intelligence agencies see Putin as a major adversary who has tried to undermine U.S. relationships in Europe and interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.
Other presidents have bucked foreign policy orthodoxy to reach out to adversaries. In perhaps the most famous case, President Richard Nixon set aside the GOP’s anti-Communist cant to make his historic overture to China in 1972, leading to a tectonic shift in the Cold War.
President Obama was criticized as naive and worse by Republicans and by his chief Democratic rival at the time, Hillary Clinton, after he was asked at a debate in 2007 if he would be willing to meet separately, without condition, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
“I would,” Obama said at the time. “And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of (the Bush) administration — is ridiculous.”
Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative media group, and longtime friend of Trump, said the president’s outreach abroad is part of a deliberate strategy.
“I think he wants to build bridges,” Ruddy said. “He sees that if he can open up the door by praising someone or finding something to compliment, even a guy that might be considered a bad guy, he sees that as a step in the right direction.”
But does Trump really admire Putin, Kim and other autocratic leaders?
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘admires,’ ” Ruddy said. “I think he respects people who are considered strong or people that have very high approval in their countries. That’s important for him.”
The White House already cites evidence that their strategy has paid off.
After Trump met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, for example, Cairo released Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian American aid worker who had been jailed for three years amid elSissi’s harsh crackdown on civil society.
The Obama administration, which had kept el-Sissi at arm’s length, had pressed unsuccessfully for her release.
As often with Trump, his comments sometimes have veered wildly, keeping his adversaries — and much of Washington — off balance.
Last week, for example, Trump warned darkly of the possibility of a “major, major conflict” with North Korea.
On Sunday, however, Trump praised Kim as “a pretty smart cookie” for having survived a power struggle, and a day later said he would be “honored” to meet Kim “under the right circumstances.
No U.S. president has ever met one of North Korea’s dynastic dictators.
Trump’s offer to meet such notorious leaders reflects his negotiating style, which says “you never close off the opportunity to do a deal,” said James Jay Carafano, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has briefed the president and his team on foreign policy.
“What the president is signaling is that there is always an opportunity to talk, but that is very far from saying there are no preconditions,” Carafano said. “You’re always offering (the other leader) an off-ramp: ‘Change your behavior and meet my preconditions.’ ”
Trump’s National Security Council recently completed a policy review on North Korea and recommended a carrot-and-stick combination of increased pressure and greater engagement.
Jim Walsh, a security policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said an open channel of communication with Pyongyang could help prevent war. But he warned that Trump’s see-sawing statements also could be misunderstood.
“Because you can get to war through miscalculation, misperception,” he said. “Frankly, the last several weeks we’ve heard a lot of bluffing, a lot of changing positions.”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that Trump understands the threat North Korea poses.
“There is a diplomatic piece to this,” Spicer said, adding that “the bottom line is the president is going to do what he has to do.”
Spicer also defended Trump’s invitation to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to visit Washington. Human rights groups say Duterte has either encouraged or condoned a brutal campaign of extrajudicial killings that has left more than 7,000 alleged drug users dead since he took office last year.
Spicer said the White House was aware of the killings but said Trump sees an opportunity “to work with countries … that can help play a role in diplomatically and economically isolating North Korea.”
The Philippines has no political or economic ties with Pyongyang, so its ostensible role in a containment strategy is unclear. Duterte, for his part, told reporters he might be too busy to visit Washington.