President Trump’s post-North Korea summit rhetoric almost perfectly replicates in tone that of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain following his September 1938 meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich.
As with Trump, Chamberlain had gone to a summit to meet a foreign adversary to forge a diplomatic compromise for peace. And as with Trump, Chamberlain left Munich with a piece of paper and a declaration of peace. But consider the deeper comparisons.
On Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter to declare that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” Trump added,
Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018
That “sleep well tonight” line reminded me of Chamberlain’s words nearly 80 years ago when he returned from Munich having accepted Hitler’s annexation of areas of Czechoslovakia in return for the Nazi leader’s promising against future expansionism. Addressing the crowds from Downing Street, Chamberlain declared triumphantly “I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”
Like Trump, who now claims that North Korea will enter a glorious new era of wealth, happiness and peace, Chamberlain was exuberant about the future. “The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem which has now been achieved,” Chamberlain noted, “is in my view only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace … here is the paper which bears [Hitler’s] name upon it as well as mine.”
Less than a year later, Chamberlain would realize that papers signed by dictators are as useful to peace as empty gas tanks are useful to cars.
In Trump’s rhetoric I thus see the warnings from history. After all, what has Trump got, apart from his sacred paper with two names on it? Nothing.
In contrast, Trump has given Kim Jong Un time to continue his covert intercontinental ballistic missile weaponization program, and space to ameliorate the “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign targeting his regime. Indeed, the Chinese and Russians have already moved to increase their smuggling to North Korea. A source who works on North Korea recently told me that traffic along the Chinese-North Korean border has ticked upward significantly. Oh, and Kim has also gained Trump’s suspension of military exercises that keep U.S. and South Korean forces ready to fight and win.
Now we get to see Kim’s hardliner in chief, Kim Yong Chol, attempt to play for time with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Where does this lead? Perhaps Pompeo will get the North Koreans to concede something, but I suspect not. On Trump’s current strategic track, this process most likely ends with Kim Jong Un completing his ICBM program, degrading the international sanctions regime, and weakening U.S. credibility (a top Chinese priority). Eventually the North Koreans will test an intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a re-entry survivable nuclear warhead.
What happens then? Well, diplomacy will only be feasible with a much harder U.S. negotiating strategy toward North Korea and its Chinese and Russian enablers. But will Trump even consider diplomacy after regarding himself as personally betrayed?
There’s a real risk that Trump’s excitement today and frustrations tomorrow will close his mind to new diplomacy. That, like Alice in wonderland, Trump will tweet, “At any rate I’ll never go there again! It’s the stupidest tea/[diplomatic]-party I ever was at in all my life.”
Unfortunately, unlike Alice, Trump isn’t dreaming and neither are we.
