...... Trump could have accepted the offer of diplomacy by sending his negotiators to begin talks. But he gave away a massive concession upfront, taking away leverage his negotiators could have used. The North Koreans knew they were getting the summit anyway, so they did not have to give anything up. There was still room to use the summit effectively, as Trump could have remained vague on a timeline and only confirmed it once North Korea made real concessions.
Then the summit happened, and nothing came out of it. There was no explicit promise by North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, no interim steps towards denuclearization, no inspectors. This, by the way, makes clear that cancelling the summit was not a negotiating tactic, and if it was, that is some art of the deal. The United States got less than it did in past agreements with North Korea, all of which had been negotiated by much lower ranking officials than the president.
What did come out of the summit? The United States got North Korea to agree to hold more meetings, which is exactly what they were willing to do when Trump first announced the summit in March. But in Trump’s world, having met Kim and smiled for the cameras, all the problems have now been solved. Despite North Korea still having exactly the same number of nuclear weapons and missiles as the day before the summit, Trump tweeted, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” It seems like his plane must have been rerouted to fantasyland.
After beating the drum of what would be a catastrophic war, Trump is now trying to lower the bar to the floor and convince people that just engaging in diplomacy equates with having saved the world from nuclear annihilation. As Mira Rapp Hooper noted, this is nuclear gaslighting, plain and simple. We can all be thankful that we are not at war with North Korea. But Trump deserves none of that credit because a preventive war with North Korea is not a remotely responsible policy option that any president should consider when dealing with the Kim regime.
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thehill.com |
