Trump’s Historic Bet on Kim Summit Shatters Decades of Orthodoxy
ByDonald Trump took the biggest gamble of his presidency on Thursday, breaking decades of U.S. diplomatic orthodoxy by accepting an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The bet is that Trump’s campaign to apply maximum economic pressure on Kim’s regime has forced him to consider what was previously unthinkable: surrendering the illicit nuclear weapons program begun by his father. If the president is right, the U.S. would avert what appeared at times last year to be a steady march toward a second Korean War.
It was classic Trump, showing an unerring confidence to get the better end of any negotiation. But it was also Trump in another way: high risk and high reward, with little regard for those in the foreign policy establishment who worry it’s too much, too soon.
“He’s taking a risk,” said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “By seizing an opportunity for a summit meeting, a decision that would have taken much more time in another administration, the president has said, ‘I’m going to go right now. And we’re going to test this.”’
Read More: Trump Hails ‘Great Progress’ With Plan to Meet Kim Jong Un
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared to introduce a bit of wiggle room for Trump on Friday, telling reporters at a briefing that the president wouldn’t proceed with the meeting “until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea.” She didn’t elaborate, though a South Korean envoy said Kim pledged to stop nuclear tests until the summit.
A White House official later said the administration isn’t adding conditions for the meeting beyond holding Kim to his pledge not to conduct new tests.
There is no protocol for Trump to follow or guidebook for him to fall back on: he would be the first sitting U.S. president ever to meet with a North Korean leader.
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