President Trump deserves credit for canceling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned trip to North Korea. For Pompeo to have gone to Pyongyang now would have signaled weakness at a crucial moment.
It’s a crucial moment because of North Korea’s ongoing prevarication in its action to begin complying with the Singapore communique. That agreement between Kim Jong Un and President Trump committed North Korea to giving up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in return for normalization of relations with the U.S. and the international community.
The problem, however, is that North Korea has begun reaping the dividends of the communique without doing anything of substance to live up to its own obligations. The major benefits for North Korea have come in the form of a Chinese, Russian, and South Korean relaxation of their sanctions enforcement against the North. Simultaneously, Kim Jong Un has avoided the imposition of new U.S. sanctions under the pretense that both sides are acting in good faith. Sadly, only the U.S. is doing so. President Trump has repeatedly praised Kim Jong Un even as the North Korean state media has thrown scorn at Pompeo.
More problematic has been North Korea’s relentless, covert pursuit of end-stage ballistic missile capabilities. The North Koreans have assessed that they could continue much of this activity without being caught. But because of boutique U.S. intelligence capabilities the North Koreans have no awareness of, they have miscalculated. Trump has been regularly briefed on the scale and speed of North Korea’s ongoing nuclear and ballistic missile efforts. As a result, he knows with confidence that Kim Jong Un is lying to him.
And that’s why Trump’s overt decision to cancel Pompeo’s trip carries significant weight: It sends a personal presidential message of dissatisfaction to Kim Jong Un, and it does so in the context of South Korea’s open appeasement of North Korean regime. In consideration of that divergence between Seoul and Washington, Trump’s rejection of this summit will spark fear in the North Korean leader’s mind and that of his senior hardliner adviser, Kim Yong Chol. They fear Trump because they believe that he is capable of carrying out all the threats of destruction he has warned about.
In that sense, Trump’s cancellation of Pompeo’s visit is far more constructive than the secretary’s attendance in Pyongyang. Kim Jong Un is being educated to the fact that Trump’s friendship is not unconditional and that the American president’s patience is running thin.
