The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Lawmakers: Trump missed historic chance
Withdrawl called a misstep
WASHINGTON — Connecticut’s Democratic congressional delegation mostly saw President Donald Trump’s own fingerprints on the demise of what would have been a historic summit meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
“Denuclearization is an extraordinarily complex goal, requiring a high level of scientific expertise as well as personal hands-on diplomacy by people steeped in the history and current economic and cultural situation in North Korea,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said in an interview Thursday. “The U.S. was unprepared, and President Trump was unwilling or unable to do the hard work of diplomacy.”
The president announced his decision Thursday to back away from the June 12 summit, saying “tremendous anger and open hostility” by North Korea had forced cancellation of a meeting that, had it been successful, would have been a major diplomatic achievement.
The two Koreas have been in a technical state of war ever since the 1953 ceasefire armistice ended the Korean War. In varying degrees, every president since then has mounted diplomatic efforts to woo Pyongyang, all doomed to failure.
North Korea’s acquisition and testing of nuclear weapons, combined with threats to use them, have raised the stakes of negotiations considerably.
Trump appeared to score a major breakthrough when he got a positive reception from Kim Jong Un to his offer of a summit.
His name was even mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Hopes for the meeting appeared to take a wrong turn when National Security Adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence used the term “Libya model” — a reference to the death of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of rebel forces in 2011.
But Libya voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003 to comply with Western conditions. The U.S. and Europe helped topple his Gaddafi’s regime anyway — likely a lesson not lost on the North Korean leader.
“The lead up to the meeting has been as discombobulated as everything else in this White House’s foreign policy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “But I still hope these talks happen, because the alternative — the White House war cheerleaders using this failure as an excuse to move toward military action — is unacceptable.”
Rep. Jim Himes, a member of the House intelligence committee, said Trump deserved credit for thinking outside the box, showing a willingness to try a fresh approach.
Nevertheless, “the president believed he could use the power of persuasion, but that’s not how it works in the world of high-stakes diplomacy,” he said. “You shoot from hip, you get played. And we got played here.”
Blumenthal pointed to the decimation among State Department ranks of officials with long experience in North Korea. A careful, thoughtful approach to a major diplomatic undertaking is an attribute of both past Republican and Democratic administrations, he added.
“Look at Nixon to China,” he said, referring to President Richard Nixon’s successful opening to China, resulting from a 1972 trip to Beijing. “He didn’t just get on Air Force One and head over there. There was a lot of preparation beforehand.”