Given the rhetorical bombshells fired from Pyongyang over the past few days, President Trump felt he had no choice but to cancel the June 12 summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. For the president, the decision was likely a difficult one to make. He talked up the meeting over the last 10 weeks as a bold and politically courageous move for world peace and a first step towards achieving a goal that all of his predecessors failed to meet: the disarming of a hostile North Korean regime from its nuclear weapons stockpile.
Realistically, it was probably a good move for the president to back away. His administration was all over the place on what a nuclear agreement with North Korea would look like and how long the denuclearization process would take.
National security adviser John Bolton was still living like it was 2003 or 2004, blabbing during television interviews that Kim would have to follow the example of Moammar Gadhafi by giving up everything before receiving even a penny of sanctions relief. The idea, to put it nicely, was about a decade and a half too late; if this type of arrangement didn’t work when Pyongyang wasn’t yet a nuclear power, it wasn’t going to work today when Pyongyang has perhaps as many as 60 nuclear bombs in its inventory.
Then there was Trump, who appeared caught between the Bolton approach and a more phased, step-by-step process that would be spread over a far longer period of time. Where Trump stood on this question depended on where the hour hand on the Oval Office clock stood.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, contradicted the president this week at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stressing that North Korea would need to take concrete, verifiable, and irreversible steps toward denuclearization before any economic and political goodies were handed over to Kim. There was so much internal chaos that you could forgive the North Koreans for being angry.
Would it have been entertaining to see Trump and Kim shake hands and pose for photos? It sure would. In fact, such a sight would have literally been historic.
But that’s likely all a meeting would have been: interesting atmospherics, coupled with a vague statement at the end of the discussions about Washington’s willingness to normalize relations with the North and Pyongyang’s willingness to denuclearize. In other words, the product would have likely looked nearly identical to every other joint communique and declaration issued since the early 1990s. After both sides passed generalities and dove into the details — for instance, figuring out at what point in the process North Korea would receive some concessions — diplomacy would be hooked back on life support.
There is always an opening for dialogue. Trump’s cancellation, though, means that the U.S. will need to fall back on deterrence in the interim.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
