I support President Trump’s decision to salute North Korean general and newly-appointed Defense Minister No Kwang Chol. The salute occurred during Trump’s recent summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and was recently aired on North Korean state propaganda.
Predictably, many observers are now saying that Trump’s action serves as an endorsement of North Korea’s tyrannical regime and have taken to Twitter to decry it.
Just the President of the United States saluting a North Korean general. Cool cool cool. pic.twitter.com/L5t94EKzkf
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) June 14, 2018
Adding to the furor, Obama administration State Department Spokesman John Kirby told CNN that “It was an inappropriate for [Trump] to do from a protocol perspective, but now he’s played right into the North’s propaganda about their legitimacy on the world stage.”
I disagree.
First off, what the above tweet and many of the tweets floating around do not show is that Trump originally went in for a handshake. Trump only saluted when No Kwang Chol first saluted him. His response was thus both reflexive and indicative of proper military protocol which is situated on a baseline of respect. As commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces, Trump has the unilateral right of protocol to salute whoever he so wishes.
Second, who cares that the North Koreans aired this footage on their propaganda networks? The summit was always the big propaganda coup for Kim Jong Un, not the niceties of its conduct. But consider something else: shown saluting one of their generals, the propagandists are representing Trump as a respectful American president rather than a blood-sucking demagogue (the normal presentation of North Korean state media). Perhaps North Korean viewers will now regard the U.S. with a little less brainwashed hatred?
There’s an irony to Trump’s critics here in that just last week, they were lamenting Trump’s alienation of global populations.
Even then, No Kwang Chol is a moderate in contrast to other members of the North Korean inner circle, such as Kim Yong Chol. It is thus positive if Trump’s rendering of respect to Kim Yong Chol boosts the minister’s influence with Kim Yong Un (of course, Kim Jong Un may simply have appointed No Kwang Chol in order to suck the U.S. into a false sense of optimism in belief of his moderation).
Yet, ultimately, there’s a much simpler rationale for why Trump was right: tradition and military etiquette. While tradition and etiquette might not normally be associated with this president, in this case, he was absolutely on the mark. Consider U.S. Navy regulations, for example, which specify that “Passing honors shall be exchanged with foreign warships passed close aboard and shall consist of parading the guard of the day, sounding ‘Attention,’ rendering the salute by all persons in view on deck, and playing the foreign national anthem.”
This applies to adversaries in conditions of peaceful interaction as much as with allies and it speaks to retaining honor amid a profession of life and death.
In short, Trump did the right thing. This salute doesn’t mean Trump has endorsed North Korea’s brutal regime or that the general Trump saluted is America’s friend. It simply means that Trump rendered military honors in pursuit of diplomacy.
