LYING, BUMBLING, FAILING, Trump's inept North Korean policy

 

Lying, bumbling, failing, this is the best way I can think to describe President Trump’s policy towards North Korea. Even if you somehow agree with Trump’s domestic agenda there is no way a reasonable person can look at the last two and half years of American-North Korean relations as anything other than a disaster. To be fair, no President has had much success with the Kim regime, but Trump’s often patently false statements and complete lack of understanding of the North Korean autocracy has strengthened Kim Jong Un’s regime and allowed them to continue to build their nuclear capabilities.

Even Trump supporters will often acknowledge Trump’s problematic relationship with the truth but one of his recent lies was so egregious that I couldn’t let it pass unchallenged. In a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-In Trump said, “President Obama wanted to meet, and Chairman Kim would not meet him. The Obama administration was begging for a meeting. They were begging for meetings constantly. And Chairman Kim would not meet with him.” This statement is the exact opposite of the truth. Early in Obama’s Presidency he expressed a willingness to talk to the North Koreans and his administration attempted to negotiate a summit, but their position was always that there had to be conditions, no meeting just for the sake of a photo-op. Eventually it became clear to the American negotiators that the North Koreans had no intention of committing to denuclearization with inspectors verifying compliance. Kim Jong Un always wanted the one on one meeting, it was Obama who refused to meet unless there was a prior agreement on the principle of denuclearization.

This is far from Trump’s only lie concerning North Korea, he also said on multiple occasions that the Obama Administration “did nothing, nothing, Absolutely nothing on North Korea.” I’ve already referred to the negotiations that occurred between the Obama Administration and North Korea, but after the negotiations hit an impasse, he began a policy of strategic patience. This policy consisted of strengthening sanctions, maintaining a strong military deterrence in South Korea and working to further isolate the Kim regime internationally. Did this policy prevent the North Koreans from making progress in their nuclear program? No, but it did put pressure on Kim Jong Un and limited the resources he had available for the program. North Korea has been pretty consistent in their refusal to give up their nuclear program or to limit their missile systems; short of a risky military option, this policy is probably the best you’re going to get. In fact, some have likened Trump’s policy to functionally the same since he’s come around to waiting for Kim Jong Un to make concessions rather than taking the military actions he threatened earlier in his term.

Trump also stated on several occasions that we were on the brink of war with North Korea when he took office, like as when he said, “the day before I came in, we were going to war with North Korea.” According to Trump, he’s responsible for averting the war that Obama was about to launch. The truth is, as stated earlier, Obama had settled into a policy of strategic patience, there was no imminent threat of war when he left office. It was Trump and his threat that North Korea would see “fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” that brought the U.S. and North Korea to the brink of war.

There was also the time Trump said, “They’re taking down plants, they’re taking down a lot of different testing areas, they’re going to take down some more,” when in fact they were still pursuing their nuclear program and building new missile facilities. Trump also said, “during the Obama administration, it seemed like a missile a week. I mean a lot of missiles going up,” when actually the rate of North Korean missile launches has been about the same during Trump’s time in office as it was in Obama’s. The last lie I’m going to detail is when he referred to North Korea’s latest missile launch as “some small weapons” which didn’t disturb him. These missiles showed new sophistication in their missile technology and had the capability of reaching tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea and Japan, not to mention they were a violation of U.N. resolutions. Trump’s entire tenure as President has seen a continuous flow of obvious lies concerning North Korea.

So that’s the lying part of today’s program, but what about the bumbling? From the start, Trump’s actions and rhetoric towards North Korea has often been confusing and contradictory. The first major blunder was in his efforts to secure the release of American Otto Warmbier who had been arrested in North Korea the year before. To secure his release Trump had to bow to Kim’s demand that the U.S. accept a $2 million-dollar hospital bill for Warmbier’s medical care. It appears that the bill wasn’t actually paid, although there’s still some question about that, still it showed that Trump was willing to throw America’s normal policy of not negotiating with terrorist under the bus. A willingness to accept a phony hospital bill to gain the release of an American hostage probably can be justified on a humanitarian basis, however, following his release it became clear that Warmbier had been tortured while in custody, dying of his injuries shortly after his release. Rather than condemn the North Korean dictator for the crimes, Trump defended Kim. Trump stated that he believed Kim’s statement that he was unaware of Warmbier treatment and that he “felt very badly about it.” Kim Jong Un is an autocratic dictator with a long history torture, rape and murder of anyone who shows disloyalty to his regime, the idea that Kim was ignorant of the treatment of their most high-profile prisoner is ridiculous.

The next major blunder came in Aug 2017 when Trump made the off-the-cuff remark, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” The very next day North Korea’s news agency issued a statement threatening to envelope Guam in fire, two weeks after that he launched a series of missiles including one that traveled nearly 1700 miles and finally, about a week later he detonated a hydrogen bomb, far surpassing their earlier nuclear test. There was no response from Trump. Despite decades of North Korea continually showing they are not easily intimidated, Trump gambled that if he made a tough sounding threat Kim Jong Un would back down. North Korea’s response showed they weren’t the least concerned about Trump’s empty threats and Trump was revealed to the world to be all talk.

The next two blunders concern Trump’s meetings with Kim Jong Un. The most important blunder is that the meetings happened at all. Like I stated earlier, Kim has wanted a bilateral summit with an American President for decades. It’s not hard to figure out why, the state has total control of the media in North Korea. The results of a summit are secondary to the photo-op. Once they have the photo of the American President with Kim Jong Un they can spin it anyway they want. It gives the illusion that America and North Korea are equal players on the world stage and makes for excellent propaganda in the North Korean Press. That’s why previous administrations of both parties have insisted that they have a solid agreement negotiated beforehand and that any summit include other regional players such as China, South Korea and Japan. The most recent trip by Trump was the most ill-conceived of the three meetings, there wasn’t even the pretext of negotiations, the photo-op was the only objective. By agreeing to meet with Kim Jong Un on three separate occasions without any concessions from North Korea, Trump handed Kim the public relations victory the North Koreans had sought for decades.

The North Koreans have had three main objectives in relation to the United States since at least the 1990s: bilateral meetings with the American President, reductions of U.S.-South Korean military exercises and sanctions relief. Trump handed North Korea their first objective with the series of one-on-one meetings with the President. Trump then proceeded to give Kim Jong Un their second objective by canceling the annual military exercises with the South Koreans during their first summit. This was a major concession that every American President had resisted without North Korea showing significant steps towards denuclearization. Trump gave away the farm and got nothing but an undefined promise to denuclearize with no inspections to verify their actions. By all accounts North Korea has continued work on both their nuclear and missile programs. Despite North Korea’s defiance of UN Resolutions and their undeterred weapons development Trump has continued to appease Kim by scaling back the size of military exercises, ignoring North Korean missile launches and absolving Kim of responsibility for Otto Warmbier’s torture and death.

Perhaps nothing shows how detached Trump is from reality concerning North Korea more than his statements about their potential for economic growth. On several occasions he has expressed his opinion that if North Korea gives up their nuclear program, they could become a hot spot of international economic development. Trump looks at North Korea and sees undeveloped coastal regions and business opportunities, he assumes this is how everyone thinks. It’s likely Trump agreed to hold their second summit in Vietnam because he though Kim would see the economic growth there and be enticed into agreeing on a denuclearization plan. This shows his lack of understanding of the goals of the Kim regime. Since they first came to power following WWII, the Kim’s have had a single focus on maintaining power. Foreign investment would bring foreigners and foreign ideas into the country, that’s the last thing Kim Jong Un wants. North Korea became the hermit kingdom by design, anything that threatens the Kim’s hold on power is suppressed at all costs. One on one summits with the American President make him look like a strong leader, that strengthens his position, outside investment in North Korea is a threat. Trump has a fundamental ignorance of North Korean motivations that is the underlying cause of his continual bumbling.

If you’ve read this far, the failure of Trump’s North Korean policy should be self-evident. Again, no American President has had a successful North Korean policy since they’ve started pursuing nuclear weapons. Short of military action there is only so much that can be done to force a country to do something they don’t want to do. However, any objective evaluation of President Trump’s actions towards North Korea shows someone completely in over their head. He went from making crazed threats of annihilation that he wasn’t prepared to follow through on and being critical of previous administrations for being too soft on the Kim regime to saying he and Kim Jong Un had “fell in love.” He gave away two of our strongest bargaining chips without getting anything in return. All the evidence indicates that North Korea has continued their weapons research unabated throughout Trump’s term and his empty threats and wild policy changes, that often take his own staff by surprise, has left the rest of the world shaking their heads at our mystifying foreign policy decisions. Is it any wonder that the British Ambassador just sent a memo back to London referring to President Trump as “diplomatically clumsy and inept?” It’s true that real success on North Korea will probably continue to be elusive regardless of who’s in the White House, but Trump has shown himself to be uniquely unqualified to handle our complex and potentially explosive relations with North Korea.