Thursday, May 24, 2018

The Trump-Kim Relationship: Learning Foreign Affairs the Hard Way


There is no instruction book for being President of the United States, and every new president has to learn on-the-job. Most do this in measured ways, taking, or at least considering, the advice of their senior foreign policy advisors before taking action. The incumbent, though, goes about things in a unique, and uniquely dangerous way. I call it, DITTW, or Do It the Trump Way. He blusters, threatens, demeans, and makes grandiose pronouncements, only to have, in light of subsequent events, to walk everything back into the corral.

The summit with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un is a case in point. Trump started out with a war of words, promising ‘fire and fury,’ and calling Kim ‘the little Rocket Man,’ and then, after the North Koreans finally agreed to a meeting and released three Americans they’d been holding prisoner, calling Kim, ‘honorable.’ Of course, his bombastic national security advisor, John Bolton, put his spoon in the soup, referring to the ‘Libya option’ in regard to North Korea’s nuclear program, which caused them to threaten to cancel the whole thing.

Now, with North Korea dismantling an already destroyed nuclear facility with international press witnesses, Trump has cancelled the planned June 12, meeting in Singapore with ‘regret.’

In my humble opinion, as someone who had over 30 years of experience as a diplomat, and several years working on Korean issues, both north and south, a firm date for a leader summit should never have been announced before many preparatory meetings were held, and it should have been realized from the outset that North Korea is not about to unilaterally give up the only thing it sees as protecting it from the U.S. A more stable, wise person would’ve done this analysis before making public statements and promises and would listen and heed the advice from a variety of knowledgeable people before making any decisions. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and some hard lessons are being put forth—I hesitate to say that they are being learned, because, frankly, I have my doubts. We can only hope that the current situation does not go beyond another ‘war of rhetoric.’

Life teaches hard lessons, but only for those who are willing to learn. Too often, though, it is those of us outside the classroom who suffer the consequences when the ‘students’ refuse to learn.

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