Be still the palpitating hearts of those who see in the above title an analogy to Watergate (though that may yet come from Robert Mueller). The Moment referred to is of the “Only Nixon could go to China” variety. In much the same way as his predecessor was an arch-conservative, well-known Communist hater who had enough necessary cachet with the Right Wing to break open the dragon gates of the Middle Kingdom in 1972 and begin an astonishing dialogue that led to China’s resurgence, so too would a firebrand with a penchant for quasi-demagogic language who has practically wrapped himself around the alt-right flag be insulated in his acceptance of an invite to meet the very man he’s been deriding for almost a year.
In a stunning turn of events few could have predicted, Donald Trump personally injected himself into a security briefing intended for his top foreign policy deputies, invited South Korean officials who’d just met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un into the Oval Office, and agreed on the spot to a historic but exceedingly risky summit with Kim. He then orchestrated a dramatic public announcement by those same Korean officials on the driveway outside the West Wing that was broadcasted live on cable networks, once again proving his ability to dominate the global new cycle.
While this website has been predicting something akin to this kind of dramatic move (we actually envisioned a secret flight by the President to Pyongyang) the news seemed to strike Washington, Seoul and all points in between with the shock and awe Trump loves to create (well, maybe more shock and less awe). Indeed inside the White House, the President -- whose volley of taunts and threats with Kim has set much of the world on edge over a potential military confrontation for months -- was rumoured to be revelling in his Big Reveal, which, as he must have known it would, completely overshadowed the increasingly high-profile scandal surrounding his alleged affair with pornographic film star Stormy Daniels and the firestorm of criticism (some from his own party) over the punitive trade tariffs he’d announced earlier in the day.
The Trump bull’s personal involvement in the China shop (pun intended) of deliberations over the world’s current most serious and vexing security conundrum has placed a Chief Executive who considers himself a master dealmaker into the most fraught faceoff of his 71 years. A breakthrough that would reduce Pyongyang’s nuclear threat would be a legacy-defining achievement on par with Nixon’s Chinese rapprochement, possibly even a (shudder Democrats) Nobel Peace Prize shared with Kim and South Korean president Moon Jae-in. A stalemate that delivers the dictator a photo op for nothing in return save nice visuals could rend U.S. alliances and be seen as a devastating embarrassment from which Trump and the Republican party might pay a frightful electoral price in November.
But what that mad day of frenetic activity and wild confusion at the White House also illustrated was that in his unconventional presidency, which has at its epicentre his force of personality, Trump has simply considers himself to be his own best diplomat, negotiator and strategist. The trouble with that approach is that it often sows confusion in its wildly chaotic wake. When the press (and the world) found its metaphorical feet again, a single burning question seared itself across countless minds: what’s the next step with North Korea?
The answer wasn’t, and still isn’t, clear as Trumpian aides struggled to explain whether concrete steps from Pyongyang toward denuclearization were a precondition ahead of the summit, what the agenda of the talks will encompass and how a president known to disdain thick single-spaced briefing books intends to prepare for an adversary that U.S. intelligence officials really don’t know much about. In fact, within hours of the bombshell statement, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders began “walking back” what sounded like a done deal and the Presidents unequivocal enthusiasm.
In fact, it was not the details of the planning process but rather Trump’s impulsive, exceedingly improvisational style that was the biggest conversational point among the press and foreign policy establishment as top aides fanned out to try and explain why the president had taken this enormous gamble -- it spotlighted an instinct that has defined Trump’s early foreign policy: say the things others wouldn’t say; do the things they didn’t dare do.
Trump’s taboo-breaking instinct was most recently on clear display in his December decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel -- a pledge several presidents had made but, on the counsel of advisers and fellow world leaders, decided to set aside or ignore entirely. Trump officials say that was a key factor behind the president’s thinking, something he made clear in a Dec. 6 statement from the White House: “While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver,” Trump said. “Today, I am delivering.”
The seductive allure of a bold gesture also helped motivate Trump’s surprise airstrikes last spring to punish Syrian regime forces for the use of chemical weapons. The Obama administration spent angsty years debating military options and “red lines” in Syria that it never acted on. Trump -- who ordered the attack from his Mar-a-Lago resort in south Florida -- made it look easy.
The principle even applies to Trump’s stubborn overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom the president has tried repeatedly to befriend in the face of overwhelming political opposition (and evidence of Russian interference in the US’s and her allies’ affairs). Special counsel Robert Mueller may yet find that Trump has ulterior motives. But Trump’s outreach to Russia is also consistent with a desire to do what the foreign policy establishment -- against which he partly campaigned -- insists can simply not be done.
Trump will have another chance to shock and awe the world come May, besides the North Korean meeting, when he must again decide whether to extend the Iran nuclear deal or walk away from the accord. Administration officials have bluntly warned alarmed European allies that he is serious about abandoning the deal once and for all if they don't find a way to strengthen or supplement it. Some doubt that it can be done without driving Iran out of the agreement, potentially risking a military confrontation with Tehran.
Grand gestures like these may make for high drama, if not questionable diplomacy -- but they come fraught with real danger, especially when made by a figure with no experience or expertise in foreign policy.
Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, for instance, likely obliterated any near-term hope of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The limited Syria air strike has underscored Trump’s unclear policy towards the country, critics say, where the regime has recently mounted so many chlorine gas attacks that Trump is reportedly considering another military strike.
And a naïve desire to reach out to Putin, members of both parties argue, prevents Trump from pushing back against Russian political meddling and leaves European allies questioning whether they can rely on the U.S. for protection from Putin.
Just as U.S. officials have spent years studying Kim, building a psychological profile of the young tyrant, the North Koreans have been closely watching the U.S as well. They undoubtedly noticed Trump’s stated interest about the idea of meeting Kim, which dates to at least mid-2016. They also have come to regard him a brash wild card completely unlike any other previous president (an opinion their erstwhile Chinese allies would have already shared with them, befuddled as they very likely are with his erratic policy manoeuvres).
Some Trump allies argued on Thursday that it was the president’s very record of defying convention that led to Kim’s unexpected invitation. Trump’s glee in shocking the Council on Foreign Relations set, they maintained, left Kim fearful that the U.S. president might do what nearly everyone in th world called unthinkable: risk the deaths of millions in Asia by attacking his country. They cited the comments of a North Korean defector and former regime official, who said that Kim “is afraid that the U.S. will launch a preventative strike.” In this, the North Korean leader is not alone.
Across Washington, foreign policy experts tried to make sense of the news, with many betting that the talks would not happen after the Trump team heard negative feedback from Tokyo, conservatives in Seoul opposed to President Moon Jae-in’s liberal government and some in Congress who fear the move is too rash.
To say the Japanese, who have been wary of offering Kim a propaganda platform, were blindsided would be saying that the sky was blue. Trump hastily called Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and invited him to visit the White House in April to confer ahead of the summit with Kim, which officials said will take place by the end of May. Indeed, many in Tokyo’s political establishment are likely betting the meeting will not take place as the President’s infamous attention span, loses interest as the details of policy and position papers need to be painfully grinded out.
The risks of such a meeting, however, were well known on the U.S. side: The North has violated past agreements to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, and no sitting American president has met with a North Korean leader over fears of being set up for failure.
Indeed, earlier last week, Vice President Pence, who was supposed to meet with North Korean officials during the Olympics to deliver a hard-line warning, vowed that the administration’s “posture toward the regime will not change until we see concrete steps toward denuclearization.” On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, traveling in Africa, told reporters that the administration was “a long ways from negotiations.” Dissonance? Or intentional misdirection?
It is equally possible, many analysts argued Thursday, that the North Korean dictator is not afraid at all, but empowered -- and seeking to draw Trump into a trap that will enhance Kim’s domestic mystique while buying himself time and political goodwill in South Korea and beyond.
Trump as Grand Negotiator is a narrative the White House is going to push for all it is worth. So it behoves observers to focus on the substance rather than getting lost in the atmospherics of overblown rhetoric from any side. And that means answering hard questions about what Kim might demand from the US at a summit. At the very least, Kim will want a peace treaty as a formal ending to hostilities that have technically be going on for sixty-five years, which would offer him at least a kind of “fig-leaf” victory he could spin to his people as a concession that the US would not attack North Korea wrung from Trump. Furthermore, because we know Pyongyang’s decades-long goal has been to see off U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula, there seems little doubt that Kim will be probing Trump to try to undermine the U.S. commitment to South Korea’s defense and to see what it will take to achieve a U.S. troop withdrawal. And given that events have shown that, shall we say, alliance management and reassurance have not been hallmarks of this administration, we can expect Kim to poke everywhere for daylight between Washington and Seoul.
What makes the putative summit even more complex for the United States is that China is itself playing a double game, acting as both ally and adversary. Arguably, the Trump administration has played its China card reasonably well to this point, as Beijing has been at least outwardly supportive of international efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and has even been more cooperative in enforcing sanctions against Pyongyang to that end. But all that cooperation could be compromised as the subject matter changes from denuclearizing North Korea to maintaining America’s large military presence in South Korea in the event that Kim Jong-Un really is serious about drawing down his nuclear forces.
Beijing and Moscow would like nothing better than to see U.S. forces withdrawn from South Korea. These days, Russia’s entire foreign policy appears oriented toward weakening America’s international standing. China, meanwhile, has been spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build up its naval and conventional capabilities in order to challenge the primacy of American military power in Asia. So, even though Beijing is sympathetic to US concerns about North Korea’s nuclear weapons, Chinese leaders would be all too happy to see U.S. troops leave the peninsula.
As a “nationalist” not a “globalist,” Trump has in the past questioned the purpose and the price tag of U.S. military forces deployed abroad. Given its nationalist bias and the president’s penchant for unorthodox policies and behaviour, it’s also not hard to imagine the current administration breaking decades of precedent and putting U.S. forces on the negotiating table in some fashion. But if it does, the outcry from defense officials and traditional experts back in Washington is likely to be far more intensely critical than anything it has heretofore experienced. It may even provoke a backlash of the resignation sort from Trump cabinet members who feel that his freewheeling style could compromise national security interests.
As far as alliance management is concerned, 2017 saw Washington talking tough against North Korea even while advocating trade sanctions against its South Korean ally, which has now occurred. This time around, the controversy is likely to center on ideas for financial or other assistance to North Korea to promote progress on the nuclear issue. For the Trump team, the dilemma could become acute. If it is not willing to contemplate cuts in U.S. forces, what incentive other than aid is left for Pyongyang? Simply lifting sanctions is not going to be enough to move the North Koreans, because the Kim regime has a high threshold for pain. Some aid package, along the lines of the Agreed Framework that froze the North Korean plutonium program in the 1990s, will surely be required as an inducement, and that is precisely the kind of price the Trump administration has said the United States mistakenly paid in the past.
At some point in every president’s first term, events emerge to test his management of international affairs. If the summit ends up happening, the historic fact of an American president bargaining with a dictator will constitute that test for President Trump. Managing a China that is both friend and foe and maintaining solidarity with South Korea on an issue of overwhelming importance to the Korean people will require statesmanship of the highest order.
This summit will also involve questions of profound importance to the United States and international peace and security. Will he make progress towards ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program? What will happen to the U.S. alliance with South Korea? And above all, what effect will the summit have on the struggle for military and political leadership in Asia as a rising China seeks to supplant the United States? Like it or not, we are about to find out whether President Trump is capable of handling all that.
There are clues.
After the news broke, one of the US Big Three television networks reported that Trump had spoken with its senior White House reporter. When asked whether the announcement involved talks between the U.S. and North Korea, Trump replied, "It's almost beyond that.”
“Hopefully," he added, "you will give me credit.”
With Donald Trump, this is what it always comes down to. Everything he does is geared towards applause from the gallery. The only thing we know for sure right now is that, assuming the summit does go ahead, is that in his mind he’s already writing his own applause lines.