Donald Trump made history by immediately agreeing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un without preconditions, providing Kim with an immeasurable injection of importance and legitimacy. While Trump supporters immediately began lobbying for the rarely awarded Nobel Prize for name-calling and making threats of “fire and fury,” others began to notice that just in agreeing to meet, Trump had given Kim everything he wanted.
Trump then began to generate post-agreement conditions, all of which seem to be as badly thought out and transient as the urge that caused Trump to agree to the meeting in the first place. This includes John Bolton’s insistence that any deal with North Korea should follow the “Libya Model.” Which apparently means that Kim should hand over everything he has, then sit back, wait for the invasion, and prepare for his body to be on display at the corner market.
Last week, Trump walked back the Libya comments, saying “the Libya model isn’t the model that we have at all.” Which would have been more convincing, except that they said it.
Now, after weeks of insisting that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was a requirement of any negotiation, Trump also eased away from that position. Rather than insisting that Kim has to completely give up his recently acquired nuclear arsenal, Trump now states that it’s not necessary that this happen “all at once.”
Though the idea that Kim would agree to hand over the one thing that had brought him to a meeting with Trump, even before that meeting began, always seemed dubious. And Bolton’s remarks reminding North Korea of what happens to countries that find America’s disfavor while not having handy nukes, made the situation seem … laughable seems like the wrong word. If there are going to be talks, Trump pretty much has to back down. And Trump wants talks—he already made the coins with his face in gold.
But as Donald Trump backs away from hardline requirements, he’s prepared to name the villain forcing his hand. It’s not Kim. It’s Chinese Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping.
Trump, who boils every situation down to personal relationships, has been high on his connection to Xi since the pair shared “the world’s best chocolate cake” at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has tweeted about Xi at least 25 times, and has in particular had praise for Xi’s “help” in applying sanctions to North Korea.
But the enduring benefits of the Cake Summit seems to be slipping. Earlier this month, Trump jumped right on problems of Chinese telecommunication workers at ZTE, informing his personal friend that he would do everything he could to Make China Great Again.
Trump has devoted a fair amount of energy in trying to explain why a company that was fined and punished for repeated violations of sanctions against selling US technology to both Iran and North Korea deserved to be saved. But it seemed clear that Trump expected Xi to help with the bumpy negotiations in bringing Kim to the table.
However, as reported in the New York Times, Trump’s latest remarks show that he feels good buddy Xi let him down. Trump has complained that Kim, after his train-based meeting with Xi, has been harder to deal with.
“There was a different attitude by the North Korean folks after that meeting,” Mr. Trump said. “I can’t say that I’m happy about it.”
It may, or may not, be dawning on Donald Trump that he appears to have been set up. Having agreed to the meeting with Kim Jong-un, Trump now has more prestige on the line in making that meeting happen than anyone else, including Kim. Meanwhile, Trump is not only trying to negotiate with North Korea, but with China—who has genuine leverage in both sets of talks.
If Trump has learned anything from this problem, it doesn’t show. With negotiators already indicating that China is winning the trade war, Trump has resorted to making massive over-promises to American farmers before any agreement has been struck.
That’s a position that gives someone even more power. It isn’t Trump.