USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Trump’s North Korea reality show is just bad theater
President Donald Trump loves big foreign policy events that draw the nation’s attention to — well, President Donald Trump.
He went to London recently for the spectacle of dining with the queen, ignoring the fact that he could have no meaningful discussions with her government, which is in a state of transition. He also savors his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin because the outrage they draw merely amps up the attention. But nothing is like his approach to North Korea, where he’ll apparently do anything, potentially even undermining America’s interests, for the coverage it brings.
As the result of a tweet, the foundation of a lot of his on-the-go policymaking, Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Sunday to announce the reopening of nuclear talks.
To Trump, the get-together was a grand spectacle. Not only has he already become the first U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader, he did so this time on North Korean soil, also a first. But he has been down this road before with little result. When Trump first met with Kim, in Singapore, he also drew the world’s attention. Then after a second meeting in Vietnam, the talks broke off. Now he’s at it again.
There’s more here than self-promotion, though. In constantly providing a stage for Kim, Trump is giving him legitimacy and global standing that he most assuredly does not deserve.
Making matters worse, Trump is, according to The New York Times, considering recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power and merely asking for it to freeze its arsenal, rather than giving it up. That’s a step back from last year, when Kim promised to denuclearize.
Not that it is likely Kim would follow through with either. North Korea has a long history of reneging on pledges to eliminate or freeze its nuclear weapons program. These pledges go back to 1985, when it joined a nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and 1992, when North Korea and South Korea signed a pact to denuclearize the peninsula. In 1994, it negotiated a deal with former President Jimmy Carter to freeze its program.
To give Kim so much upfront now, in hopes that he’ll reform his ways, is unwise. Other rogue nations will be encouraged to develop their own nuclear arsenals.
Indeed, Iranian leaders, who signed a deal to freeze their nuclear program in 2015, have to see the way their nation is being treated even as Trump coddles North Korea. Making a nuclear deal without weapons in hand has left Iran vulnerable to renewed sanctions from an administration hellbent on blowing up the agreement. On Monday, Iran’s foreign minister announced that his country had exceeded the enrichment caps set down by the accord.
Now, instead of one nuclear headache in North Korea, Trump’s diplomacy has resuscitated a second, making each more difficult to address. So far, Trump’s diplomatic moves in Iran and North Korea have shown great success in focusing international attention on the White House, but they show little sign of tangible nuclear progress.