WITH the ink still drying on the Singapore declaration, President Donald Trump was asked why the North Koreans were any likelier to honour its terms than all the previous nuclear agreements they have flouted. The difference, he said, was himself. “I don’t think they’ve ever had the confidence, frankly, in a president that they have right now.” It was a reminder that the only unifying principle in Mr Trump’s maverick foreign policy is his relentless eye for personal advantage.
That is apparent in his North Korea policy more broadly. To use a real-estate analogy: when he was first briefed on the state of North Korea diplomacy by his predecessor, Mr Trump perhaps saw it less as an existential threat than a fixer upper—an opportunity for an easy win. Negotiations had long been frozen over America’s demand that Kim Jong Un’s regime should give up its nuclear arms and the regime’s refusal to do so. Yet there were two ways an America president could shake things up: by promising...Continue reading
Source: United States https://ift.tt/2l8TmZb
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