President Donald Trump is going to sit down with Kim Jong-un and try to devise a way for North Korea to get rid of all of its nuclear firepower. This might not work, but, if it does, it could save the world, making up for the despicable laxity of preceding presidents. It’s diplomacy of the kind so many wanted, happens to be even more important than Trump’s rumored affair with adult video star Stormy Daniels -- and what’s the response?
Hand-wringing, that’s what, at least from too many news stories and too much commentary telling us this is too abrupt. Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, we learn. There has not been enough planning. It’s verboten for presidents to sit down face-to-face with North Korean leaders, ever. There are intricacies here Trump cannot possibly understand. It’s his ego at work in response to South Koreans visiting and indicating denuclearization really is a possibility.
It isn’t, we are informed. End of story.
North Korea could obviously be up to something duplicitous. But understand that no former president has elicited the degree of anti-Korean cooperation from China that Trump has and that China is responsible for 90 percent of North Korean trade. The UN sanctions are actually meaningful, and North Korea’s distraught economy hasn’t been made any better by the costs of nuclear armament. People going hungry is not exactly a winning position even for a murderous dictator.
On top of that, we have Trump’s “fire and fury” talk. Trump has made it clear we will not allow North Korea to get the point where it could bomb the smithereens out of us, and, in this regard, one thinks of the Cuban missile crisis.
Russia had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, a means of more easily taking us out, giving Fidel Castro more power and putting us at a strategic disadvantage. President John F. Kennedy told Russia to get the missiles out of there or we would, and things looked pretty scary for a while. Although there was a behind-the-scenes deal that was only known much later, Russia did back down.
It’s indeed possible that North Korea thinks this wild-and-crazy Trump guy just could strike militarily at its nuclear stockpile. And, despite the costs of fierce retaliation especially aimed at South Korea, the possibility should not be ruled out. Some think we could live with a nuclear-armed North Korea, but it would amount to a second Cold War. There would be nuclear proliferation all over the place. The threat of devastating destruction would rise, not go away. It would be horror.
The US goal in these talks should be what Trump has always demanded: total, immediate nuclear disarmament. We should maybe even do the work for the North Koreans and at the least send in an army of inspectors.
My own view is that we should also be willing to pay for the destruction or transport of the nuclear materials, adding another incentive for disarmament. But what else might North Korea want in return? What if Kim wants us to likewise disarm? We won’t. What if they want us to get our military forces out of South Korea? As long as North Korea maintains conventional forces capable of wiping out thousands and there is no meaningful pact between the two countries, we won’t.
Even if no agreement of any kind is reached, some say, the North Koreans will profit. But not necessarily. Once the United States has moved to do all it reasonably can diplomatically, the military option will seem more justified, and North Korea will have even more reason to worry.
I am nowhere near convinced that a president who fires his secretary of state with a tweet is capable of negotiating anything meaningful on his own, but he will be surrounded by highly skilled and knowledgeable cohorts. No one knows what will happen and making predictions is not news coverage. This negotiation matters, and it matters far more than some other press preoccupations of the moment.
Jay Ambrose Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. -- Ed.
