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Historic Snooker
The headline writers adore the word “historic.” It was ubiquitous in reporting on the April meeting between Kim Jung Un and Moon Jae-in. Kim shook Moon’s hand and then guided him over the military demarcation line to step onto North Korean territory. This prompted swoons. What rot. If that was a bona fide gesture of peaceful intent, time will tell. In the meantime, let’s assume it was a stunt.
So too with the summit between Kim Jung Un and Donald Trump, though in this case the media hype couldn’t compete with Mr. Trump’s own. He has basked in talk of a Nobel Peace Prize and predicted that he and the butcher of Pyongyang were “going to have a great discussion and a terrific relationship.” Obviously panting for a meeting, Trump was reportedly livid with National Security Advisor John Bolton, whose May comments about a “Libya solution” to the nuclear weapons problem apparently spooked Kim into withdrawing from the summit. Trump insisted that it was he who canceled, just as he did with the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House visit.
But he showed quite a lot of ankle in his note. “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me,” he cooed, closing with words conceding that it was Kim, not Trump, who had actually canceled. “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.” Kim reeled in his catch. He sent an oversized letter Trump could pose with, grinning like a winner of the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.
Why is our president smiling? You can always argue that democratic leaders must treat with dictators and even villains of various stripes for the sake of winning a war or securing the peace. You can even argue that sometimes presidents flatter unsavory leaders to build trust and ease tensions. But no historical comparisons can illuminate Trump’s ricochets between hysterical threats (“fire and fury”) and pusillanimous praise (“very talented”) without any substantive change on the part of the dictator. What has changed since the State of the Union address in which Trump honored the memory of Otto Warmbier and detailed the atrocities of the North Korean regime? In gratitude for the exchange of pleasantries, the release of a few hostages, and vague offers of “denuclearization” Trump has made himself Kim’s doormat.
As a matter of substance, the Singapore summit achieved less than nothing. It was a profound defeat for U.S. world influence and for democratic decency, arguably the worst summit outcome since Yalta. Kim promised to consider “denuclearization,” exactly as his father and grandfather had done repeatedly over the past several decades – breaking their promises each and every time. For this puff of cotton candy, Trump agreed to halt “U.S. war games” (using the North Korean term for joint military exercises with South Korea) which Trump himself called provocative! He invited Kim to the White House. He also issued the risible tweet announcing, ahem, peace in our time: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”
It’s difficult to determine just how stupid Trump thinks the American people are. But there is no question that Trump’s affection for strongmen and thugs, evident before in his praise of the Chinese murderers of Tiananmen, and his warm words for Putin, Duterte, and Xi, has now extended to the worst tyrant/killer on the planet. Trump did far more than overlook Kim’s atrocious human rights abuses, he became Kim’s PR man. “he’s a very talented man and I also learned he loves his country very much.” He has a “great personality” and is “very smart.”
Trump granted Kim’s legitimacy: “His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor.”
In 2014, a United Nations report concluded that North Korea’s crimes against humanity “entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”
What of all that? Trump is understanding, even impressed. “Hey, he’s a tough guy. When you take over a country — a tough country, tough people — and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. So he’s a very smart guy. He’s a great negotiator.”
What was Trump’s chief argument in 2016? The U.S. had been the victim of “bad deals,” with other countries and he was the great deal maker. He fingered the Iran deal as the worst deal in history. His defenders will excuse the truckling to Kim as a clever gambit to extract concessions. But Kim has offered absolutely nothing. All of the concessions have come from the United States, including the most crucial one – we’ve put ourselves on the same moral plane as North Korea. That’s what Make America Great Again has achieved.
Published in Foreign Policy
Thank you for the link, Arahant. Now, May I suggest that the first few minutes of this testify to why I am not a Mr. Klavan fan? Why some people consider this man such a sage is beyond my pay grade. But, to each his own!!
Unbelievable.
Never Trump Republicans have to be the most ineffective people I’ve ever encountered. They have one playbook. Take the moral high ground and wag a gigantic finger at those below. Always parading themselves and our country as some kind of pillar of virtue that can shame their opponents into compliant awe.
They do this in elections and lose, and they do it with foreign policy and lose.
When the dictator doesn’t comply, send in the boys from Pennsylvania and Ohio and Alabama to fight and die. I’m really disgusted with this attitude and I consider myself in a very different political party than these people.
By the way, Mona and Rachel Madow are pretty much in agreement. Maybe Mona can get a segment on her show.
But it’s nice to see that Mona believes there’s someone on Earth more deplorable than Trump.
Certainly you may. Also understand that the stances of people like Ms. Charen are at least equally divisive and off-putting to many of us. That doesn’t mean she can’t be correct about some things. However, she does not have clear vision on anything related to Trump. Mr. Klavan is able to see Trump much more clearly because he is not a partisan. He was reluctant, but now he sees results. He judges the tree by its fruit. Ms. Charen sees neither tree nor fruit, but only a wasteland. Now, the tree may only fruit for a season, and next season will have different results, but it really is too early to predict that. Trump isn’t perfect, but he is moving the Overton Window and is producing. Will his trade talks, tariffs, and posturing produce true free trade with our “allies”? Will his similar posturing, tweeting, flattery, and so forth change our enemies? At this point, I have to wonder if maybe it will all work. It’s not the way I would have done it or preferred it be done, but things are moving differently than they have in decades of the State Department way.
You don’t appreciate that Trump is a unique character and a different type of president who was elected from the outside. Trump is putting his dignity on the line — not the dignity of the United States — for the purposes of trying to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons, a task for which previous presidents have failed miserably.
[If the insider and America-hating Democrats were ever capable of electing a non-politician as president (Wesley Clark?), I hope I would give that completely imaginary president a shot.]
Trump doesn’t belong to the cowering insider party anymore than the Churchill belonged to the cowering insider party of Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin, and Lord Halifax or Reagan belonged to the Détente wing of Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford who blindly claimed that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
The president says clearly states that this whole thing might not work at all. It’s almost exclusively up to North Korea to choose the right path.
Unless President Trump starts giving away real stuff with nothing in return, what’s the experimental harm to test the limits of trying to make some progress?
What a tawdry rhetorical point. We criticize Trump because we don’t think he is succeeding not because we want him to fail, at least in this matter. In other matters I am perfectly happy to see him fail, for example I’m fine with seeing his protectionist policies fail, and I don’t much care for his immigration policies either so seeing them fail to rise to fruition is perfectly fine. I wanted Obama to fail to pass and maintain Obamacare too. As if hoping that policies you dislike fail is some unconscionable act instead of everyday politics.
And Obama didn’t start his Iranian negotiations with all of that, but that’s where he got to in the end with his desperate need for a deal. A need that Trump seems to be demonstrating here. So you’ll excuse me for raising the alarm early on this one too. And Obama was not quite so obsequious about the Iranian as Trump is proving to be about the North Koreans.
But if this doesn’t work out I’m sure Trump will make up some excuse his uncritical supporters will drink up. Though the one advantage of these negotions continuing in this vain is that I will get to see if Talk Radio can be as servile as DPRK News Media.
It seems to me that the anti-Trump insider conservatives cannot imagine a future without North Korea having nuclear weapons or the United States having thousands of Americans doing the military jobs that very wealthy and very intelligent South Korea is fully capable of doing.
I think about the only why to trust North Korea though would be with constant and complete surprise nuclear inspections — until, I guess, North Korea somehow becomes a free and democratic country as either an independent country or as part of South Korea.
It’s very difficult to see that happening, but promises of riches and legacy can sometimes make people do unimaginable and unpredictable things.
Is winding up in the same position you were in before the meeting really an abject failure? (same position = Norks keep their nukes…. which is probable in my very un-expert opinion)
I would say that if the Norks were to launch a nuclear weapon on any population, then Trumps meeting with Kim Jung Un would be an abject failure.
Obama did behave this way with the Iranians and there was no cry for impeachment …. of course Obama’s two terms were nearly complete at the time he gave $$Billions$$ (in exchange for 10 years of pretending to not be developing nukes) to the worlds chief sponsor of terror ….. so why bother with impeaching a guy as he’s walking out the door.
Edison,
You are hitting on the really disgusting tone of the “back seat drivers” for the North Korean crisis. Imagine if you will that in 1962 Fidel Castro had shot off one of the medium-range missiles that Kruschev had given him and landed it 25 miles north of Queens in the Atlantic. This is what Kim did to Japan three times. That is way more than saber rattling or a provocation. That is already three acts of war.
That we aren’t already at war is a miracle. Kim is on a super short leash no matter what the optics of the Singapore meeting. Kim hasn’t shot any missiles and hasn’t made provocative statements. Compare this to the Iran never-ending propaganda campaign against us and the continuous support of the worst Jihadist terrorists for all of the years in which we were negotiating the so-called ‘Iran Deal’. Corker and the whole sick gang destroyed the Constitution to give Obama ever more license. Now we aren’t supposed to hold our water with Trump for a couple of weeks to see what’s what. Completely stupid. They are all about Trump and could care less about the national interest or peace & prosperity in the world.
Everything is just a cheap platform for them to posture on.
Regards,
Jim
For what it is worth, Nate Silver outlines the general take of the public on this meeting in a tweet today ( can’ Link from my phone). Low expectations, NK got more than US, still a good idea, and will slightly lower the risk of war. Silver claims these views as reasonable and better than most pundits.
If Silver is right about where the public is on this, no one is buying what Mona is selling. This was not the worst idea ever and the US is not as awful as NK.
Then go for it. I’d be very interested to read your work in National Review or the Washington Times.
Oh please, Jamie. There are a number of writers on Ricochet who are as talented as Ms. Charen. Don’t be so naive. There are all sorts of reasons why a person might not publish in NR or the WT. Some don’t want to. Some don’t have the time. Some weren’t in the right place at the right time. Some would rather focus on other matters. Some are happy to confine their writing efforts to just Ricochet.
In fact, it’s hard to find a more receptive and intelligent audience than one finds on Ricochet. Some might think, “Why go elsewhere?”
Don’t be such a snob.
You have gone from the general to the specific. How often do you see my writing politics? My work is more likely to show up in a magazine like Poetry. Although truth to tell, I’m really not likely to submit anything anywhere anymore. I have no desire to dance to other people’s schedules, and I don’t have to anymore. However, people like our @midge (Midget Faded Rattlesnake) and @titustechera have gone from “mere” members to contributors at other venues, such as The Federalist and National Review. I doubt they will be the last to bubble up from Ricochet into political or cultural writing. I could see @cliffordbrown as one who is likely to do so.
Good grief.
“Obviously panting for a meeting”.
“[R]eportedly livid with…Bolton”.
“[A]pparently spooked Kim”.
“[H]e cooed”.
“Trump’s…hysterical threats….pusillanimous praise….”
These are the loaded phrases of someone with a particularly bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
May I just end by saying this: It is not moral posturing to suggest their are better ways of speaking about one’s enermies. As someone else said, even Chamberlain didn’t do this. What are the children supposed to think when they wake to stories about how our president said a man was good, and smart, who had an American killed for the high crime of stealing a poster.
I recognize the good that Trump has done. I never questioned that. But for the crime of questering his morality, I am pilloried and called a NeverTrumper by some. Not by you, Charlie. You are a good guy. But one I respectfully, and wholeheartedly, disagree with – and I ain’t about to change.
What has morality ever had to do with Trump?
Very good, Charlie. But to me, Mona, and millions of others, public office, especially the Presidency, carries with it a certain moral cache. That is being made fun of today. And even pilloried by some folk I’d rather pretend didn’t exist in my orbit.
This goes well beyond sexual morality. It is, at bottom, a decent respect for others. This is what is lacking with current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania. I am very sorry that you don’t see this, as a moral man yourself. But I suppose that is why bars carry both scotch and bourbon.
I’m not sure what to make of the Trump/North Korea meeting.
How do you fault Trump for attempting to make the world safer from nuclear war (…besides it appears the most interested party South Korea wants some sort of “peace” with the Norks).
At the same time how to you make nice with a totalitarian murderous regime.
But one thing is clear, getting a down the middle unbiased analysis from Mona Charen is not going to happen.
Mona’s analysis was spot on, and I am at pains to understand how any but the already predisposed Mona-haters cannot see it.
Perhaps you are predisposed in the other direction?
Sure I Love Mona. But it’s the type of platonic Love you have for someone that you just know in your heart is a good and Loving person!
Good and loving people can be spot on wrong.
I am amazed you can’t see that the details were worked out long in advance of this summit. Like all summit’s. Mike Pompeo went to Pyongyang twice for negotiations.
The school girl comment is unhinged.
I am also surprised you can’t see that 3 Presidents have been vexed by this problem by going down the same road to solve it.
Trump goes a different way and his detractors immediately say he got snookered without waiting for the ink to dry.
As far as I can tell Trump only halted military manouvers that can be restarted pronto. Nothing significant given accept good will.
Little Rocket Man and the like brought Kim to the table. Making nice is good will.
Carrot , stick. I hope Kim chooses Carrot.
Let us wait and see.
One doesn’t have to be a Trump hater to recognize that telling Bret Bair that Kim is just a tough leader for executing his people by the thousands is not the rhetoric one expects from the President. Trump didn’t just go negotiate with Kim, he heaped public praise on the man. It was disgusting to see.
Does anybody remember
Pootie-Poot
It took how many meetings before the Soviet Union fell? How many times did Reagan walk away? Kim is in a corner – he was given an opportunity to come into the light of day. It may be just a crack on the window, but an open window is the only hope for the suffering there to get oxygen. Get rid of nukes first, and go from there – if Kim screws it up, the world will know that everything’s been tried, and we’ll be back to the same.
Bush is a good example. He was very friendly with Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Bush called Mubarak an good example for the Middle East and a leader in the movement for Peace and Security. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080116-2.html
The Elder Bush called Mubarak a good friend who he had a long personal relationship with. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16869
All through the 80s, 90s and 2000s Amnesty International declared that violations of Human Rights by Egyptian Security Forces were systematic. And included “beatings, electric shocks, prolonged suspension by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions, death threats and sexual abuse”. Political figures and activists were imprisoned without Trial and secret detention facilities were created. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak
It would seem that both Presidents Bush had no problem speaking nicely about a leader who violated Human Rights.
“He is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” President Donald Trump on Kim Jong Un.
I don’t hate Mona, but it is apparent to most dispassionate observers that since the Republican nomination and election of 2016, Donald Trump has taken up permanent residence in poor Mona’s cranium.
Mubarak was a thug, no doubt about it. Whether he was more thuggish than the average power-hungry Egyptian I have no idea. He may have been a moderate in a country where the Muslim Brotherhood is popular. My intuition is that the Bushes praised Mubarak because they thought the alternatives in Egypt would be more brutal or at least more hostile towards Israel. As far as I know, neither President Bush praised Mubarak for his abuses.