The Summit Is Back On

The summit with North Korea is back on, with Kim and Trump now apparently set to meet in Singapore in just 12 days time. As I wrote days ago, Trump’s earlier impetuous cancellation of the summit has put him in a position of weakness and that has been borne out by the fact that Trump is heading to the summit with nothing apparently having changed since his cancellation beyond the cessation of talk about the “Libyan option” from inside his administration.

That position of weakness is borne out by the fact that neither Pompeo nor Trump was willing to even address the issue of what the North Korean position, and, for that matter, what the American position on denuclearization exactly is going into these talks. In a departure from his usual hyperbole, Trump even downplayed the expectations of this summit by indicating that he and Kim were “really going to start a process” that might require multiple meetings.

While we don’t know any of the details of the recent negotiations, it appears that the North Koreans are going to get what they have wanted for the last three decades, namely a one-on-one meeting with the American President without any preconditions. Trump pointedly said that he did not even discuss human rights issues with the North Korean envoy in their meeting at the White House. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear what exactly Trump hopes or expects to get out of the meeting, which, I guess, is hardly surprising. It is also unclear whether the South Korean President Moon, the person with the most actually invested in this meeting, will also attend.

I see that many in the media are worried that there is only 12 days for Trump to prepare for this summit. That is hogwash. Whether there was 12 days or 12 months or 12 years, Trump is always going to go in unprepared and flying by the seat of his pants. As Politico graphically illustrates, Trump’s negotiating style for the last thirty years has been to go in unprepared and overreach and overpay.

That habit, plus his lack of preparation, should scare every American as he heads off to this summit. But the parties that should really be afraid are the South Koreans and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese who could be left totally exposed if Trump does something like trade an official end to the Korean War for a reduced American military presence in South Korea in the hopes of getting a Nobel Peace Prize. That “deal” may sound absurd but is not out of the realm of possibility with Trump. And Trump will trumpet that deal as “peace on the Korean peninsula” that only he alone could create.

My best guess is that there will be an agreement to end the war in return for South Korean financial assistance. North Korea will still keep its nukes and Trump and Kim will agree to future meetings. Those future meetings will give Trump an excuse to act Presidential and deflect attention from the multiple investigations closing in on him. And that is apparently Trump’s primary focus these days.