Trump Taps Hawks In Runup to Talks

BY reshuffling his team on the eve of his most spectacular foreign policy gambit, President Trump looks to be signaling that North Korea won’t get any needless concessions simply for talking. Good. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley sent the same message Monday after briefing members of the UN Security Council on North Korea. The joint press conference was a remarkable display of team spirit, in sharp contrast to Haley’s relations with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

For the past year, whenever Tillerson came to Turtle Bay, Haley conspicuously managed to be out of town. And after his firing Tuesday, Haley tweeted her congratulation to his replacement, “my friend” Mike Pompeo, adding that Trump had made a “great decision.”

Asked about the reshuffle Tuesday, Trump highlighted his differences with Tillerson over the Iran deal: “I think it’s terrible, I guess he felt it was OK.”

And Tillerson had also been publicly pushing for North Korea talks for months while Trump was suggesting they were pointless. That the president has now axed the odd man out on his national-security team is another sign that, even if he sits down with Kim, he’s not rushing into any Iran-like deal.

And his new, more hawkish team (which also seems more attuned to Trump’s whims and manners) is well aware of the pitfalls entailed in facing Kim Jong-un,

McMaster said that, yes, the White House is “optimistic” about the first-ever presidential meeting with a Kim, but “we are determined to keep up the campaign of maximum pressure until we see words matched with deeds and real progress towards denuclearization.”

He and Haley urged council members to keep sanctions on North Korea. And Haley, likely anticipating that China will seek to undo some sanctions as a negotiation-eve gesture, said Beijing has been “very helpful and really worked with us well,” in devising the past three Security Council sanctions resolutions.

Credit Trump with getting China on board. While cheating some, Beijing’s pressure on its Korean frenemy is unprecedented — largely because Trump convinced President Xi Jinping that unless China acts on the North Korean threat, the United States will.

But summits rarely lead to denuclearization. Regime changes do.

South Africa dumped its nuclear program en route to ending apartheid and embracing full democracy, which left it with no need for nukes. By 1994, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Pretoria had dismantled its six operational nuclear bombs, plus an incomplete one. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan likewise “denuked” after gaining full independence from the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But there’s no sign of regime change on the Pyongyang horizon. So maybe Kim is a bit like Libya’s Moammar Khadafy?

In the mid-2000s the paranoid strongman believed that President George W. Bush would go after him after ousting Saddam Hussein. Preemptively, Khadafy invited the IAEA in to dismantle his nascent nuclear program.

So is Kim, perhaps spooked by Trump’s “fire and fury” threats, ready to do the same?

More likely he’s like the past leaders of Iraq, Iran and Syria — and, indeed, North Korea itself. They all got ample concessions for disarming promises that never fully materialized.

True, South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong says Kim has agreed to talk about “complete denuclearization” and promised to suspend nuclear and missile tests even as he “understands” America will continue joint military exercises with allies in the region.

And yes, all this is unprecedented. But watch out for premature giveaways.

Pyongyang got gifts from the Clinton and Bush administrations when it was about to sign deals that it later reneged on. While negotiating, President Barack Obama showered Tehran with so much cash that the Iranians were convinced he wanted a deal more than they did. This tactic led to one US concession after another — and a nuclear accord so flawed Trump may well soon walk away from it.

So Trump should be leery of eagerly chasing a legacy project that will earn him rare global cheers. We’re still very far from peacefully ridding North Korea of its arms.

Diplomacy is worth a shot, but the president will need all the hawks he can gather to assure he doesn’t fall in traps some of his predecessors eagerly ran into.

’ Watch out for premature giveaways.