Barack Obama drew criticism for the perception that while he was president, the United States in some ways abandoned its traditional role of global leadership in favor of an approach that an Obama aide memorably described as “leading from behind.” But even as the US stayed mostly away from the fray as the Syrian civil war turned into a massive humanitarian crisis, America maintained its leading position by pushing for a global response to climate change, supporting longstanding mutual defense pacts and championing free-trade deals.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump was all over the place on foreign policy, alternately sounding hawkish and isolationist. But he also said the US should stop being the world’s patsy — both in offering costly military protection to nations that didn’t do enough to strengthen their own armed forces and in accepting trade agreements that in his view harmed US workers and the US economy.

There are elements of truth in his critique. But then and now, Trump has never appreciated that having strong bilateral relations with many nations is a two-way street, benefiting American interests by promoting stability and cooperation. He has never grasped that all global issues are interrelated — that the world’s richest and most powerful nation can’t be alternately hostile and friendly to other nations on an a la carte basis and expect a warm response to new US overtures.

This point could be made crystal-clear at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. After abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord, Trump may well get a stony reception to his call for a concerted global response to North Korea’s latest successful missile launch. Fear of such an unstable dictatorship — especially if unpredictable young leader Kim Jong-un is a year or two from having nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking anywhere within 2,400 kilometers — would seem like a cause the world could rally around. But with the exception of South Korea and Japan — which have the most at stake — Trump’s call to action has so far won only muted or pro forma responses. Meanwhile, Russia and China, the nation with the most ability to influence North Korea because of its financial ties, are refusing to increase pressure on Pyongyang to stop its saber-rattling, and Beijing is actively upset with the US over what it sees as heavy-handed tactics — leading to a Trump vow to take on North Korea on his own if necessary.

For the 25 million residents of the Seoul metropolitan area — within easy reach of 8,000 North Korean big guns loaded with artillery shells from Pyongyang’s huge stockpile of biological and chemical weapons — this sort of belligerent talk shouldn’t just be scary. It should be terrifying. As acclaimed military analyst Mark Bowden wrote earlier this year in The Atlantic, the US and South Korea have no good options in stopping Pyongyang from developing an offensive, modern nuclear arsenal. Either a full-on invasion or a surgical strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities is likely to leave millions of South Koreans — and up to 30,000 US troops — dead.

The stakes could scarcely be higher. What the world needs is a calm, American-led effort to improve relationships with Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s military to address the nation’s fear that it is surrounded by enemies. What it doesn’t need is a unilateral American effort that is built on a diplomatic amateur’s bluster and denial.


Editorial by The San Diego Union-Tribune


(Tribune Content Agency)