It is shameful that many in the US liberal establishment are genuinely hoping that President Donald Trump will fall flat on his face when he actually has face-to-face talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. They would rejoice at the humiliation of their president, even though if Trump can pull off this audacious piece of summitry and persuade Kim to ditch his nuclear arsenal, the United States and the rest of the world would be considerably safer.
The two men are likely to meet before June at an as-yet-undecided location. CIA director Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to North Korea has clearly set up the encounter. Now it is for officials on both sides to work out the likely terms of agreement over which Trump and Kim will tussle. The president is keeping up the pressure on Pyongyang by vowing that if this preparatory work does not indicate success, he will not go. Equally he has said that if he finds his talks with Kim are going nowhere, he will walk out.
For seasoned politicians in Washington these threats are taken as an effective way for Trump to cover his rear. But the president, of course, is not himself a seasoned politician anxious to control expectations. He clearly means what he says. This is important. It is Pyongyang’s calculation that he is not bluffing in his confrontational approach to its nuclear weaponry that actually brought about Kim’s offer of the summit meeting. The ever-cautious Barack Obama and the lackluster machine politician Hillary Clinton would never have got this far, if they had even managed to open meaningful talks with North Korea in the first place.
The Trump-hating Washington establishment is not alone in hoping that the president will fail in his mission to pull North Korea’s nuclear teeth. The ayatollahs in Iran are deeply concerned. It is not simply that Pyongyang has provided them with parts and technology for their own nuclear warhead program. If Trump pulls off a spectacular diplomatic coup, they know that they will be next in the president’s firing line. A world relieved of its deep concern at the threat posed by an unpredictable nuclear-armed North Korea will be fully behind the US president as he moves to address the challenge posed by Tehran’s drive to become a nuclear power.
Trump will rip up Barack Obama’s lily-livered Geneva agreement with Iran and lead a willing world in the reimposition of crippling economic sanctions on the regime in Tehran. Overseas businessmen who have been busy cutting lucrative deals with the ayatollahs will have little sympathy when they complain about their losses. The international community will fall in line behind the Trump bulldozer.
All of this, of course, depends on Trump’s success in persuading Kim and other top members of the Pyongyang regime that their personal safety and future prosperity depend on their disarmament and their country’s reintegration, in some form or other, into world affairs. No one should underestimate the reality that the president has a mountain to climb. North Korea’s past behavior shows it is as slippery as an eel. But the Trump-Kim talks, which were once unthinkable, still seem to be on track. Only those in the US who loathe their President and the Iranian ayatollahs will be hoping fervently that they fail spectacularly.
