Trump failed miserably with North Korean summit
President Trump’s recently concluded meeting with North Korea’s despotic leader Kim Jongun in Singapore displays on the global stage the depths of diplomatic incompetence and malpractice to which U.S. foreign policy has sunk. In return for obsequious fawning over and stroking of Donald Trump’s fragile ego, the North Korean leader received unprecedented gifts from the world’s most famous narcissist: his own emergence out of global pariah status and explicit legitimization of the world’s most totalitarian state. Kim achieved all this without giving up his own selfinduced, unilateral nuclear arms race — his vague promises notwithstanding. And as a bonus, the president gifted him with assurances that upcoming U.S./ South Korean military exercises would he halted and U.S. troops withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula!
Make no mistake; North Korea is not a nice place. Kim Jong-un, like his father and grandfather before him, is a mini-me Stalin. President Trump’s “hard-working” North Koreans are essentially slaves, or, for many thousands, even worse. Kim heads up a gulag state that ranks last in almost every human rights category imaginable. If not for an extraordinary military deterrence capability, Kim himself and his henchmen would be subject to global war crimes indictments barely less atrocious than those of Nazi Germany.
A comparison with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran Nuclear Agreement) is striking. That agreement is truly multilateral. It contains actual teeth and enforcement mechanisms, including a continuing inspections regime and snapback sanctions if violations are found. To date, it has effectively reversed Iran’s nuclear weapons capability. Criticism of the JCPOA, including by candidate Trump, rested primarily on the fact that it did not address Iran’s non-nuclear behavior, including political interference in Iraq, support for groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and military equipment for the Houthis in Yemen. Within the multilateral negotiations that led to the JCPOA, those goals were never targeted nor were they ever achievable. In nuclear diplomacy, sometimes half a loaf is far better than none at all.
On the other hand, the president’s silence this week in highlighting North Korea’s own behavior internally and abroad, including extraterritorial assassinations, kidnappings, massive currency counterfeiting, and nuclear technology proliferation, was deafening. This was President Trump’s opportunity to display true leadership on the world stage and, perhaps, superior negotiating skills. But unfortunately, he failed miserably. If I were a South Korean, I would be frightened as hell.
In my Foreign Service career, I served in a dozen countries on five continents (although not South Korea). America’s global moral authority and leadership, in my experience, was derived not from bullying or pompous pronouncements. Instead, we led best and achieved most when our actions were clearly in the best interests of the entire world. That was not done here.