“You have things that weren’t included that we got after the deal was signed. I’ve done that before in my life. And we didn’t put it in the agreement because we didn’t have time.”
Didn’t have time?
What, was there some other place these guys needed to be? Was either leader worried about missing a flight or something? Trust me, Air Force One isn’t going to take off without the president. This isn’t the SAT, and there is no proctor declaring “pencils down” when the hour is complete.
I suppose you could argue that it didn’t matter if the North Korean pledges were written down or not . . .
.. I keep hearing from Trump fans, “Why can’t you show a little optimism?”
Well, because optimism requires us to believe that these latest promises are completely different from all of the previous promises from this regime.
.. The skepticism I have about this latest round of promises from North Korea is the exact same skepticism I bring to the Iran deal
.. One might argue that duplicity is intrinsic to the nature of any regime that is unwilling to subject itself to the limit of free and fair elections. No one’s ever looked at a dictator, tyrant, despot, or ayatollah and said, “Wow, that guy’s a really honest leader.”
.. Trump’s fans are convinced he’s got some unique “don’t mess with him” mojo that will intimidate the North Koreans into keeping their promises.
.. But I think any U.S. leader hoping to successfully negotiate a deal with the North Koreans has to keep all of this history of broken promises in the back of his mind.
Trump Breaks Rules, but When Do We Start Winning?
He is in nonstop motion on North Korea, Iran and trade. What comes next?
In a press conference after his summit with Kim Jong Un, President Trump said: “Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.”.. He has turned virtually the entire Washington press corps into a determined opposition and routinely calls on his own attorney general to resign.No U.S. president has ever done these things. What has this approach produced?
Politically, it has provided his supporters the constant reassurance that he will fight for them in the most public way with anyone.
.. Within hours of the summit, a statement by China made it clear the sanctions regime is going to erode during negotiations. Restoring that leverage will be impossible. It is a big loss.
.. we have been watching the attention-getting half of Mr. Trump’s improvisational negotiating model. Where’s the rest of it? When do we get the payoff for all this activity?
.. Feeling good again about America matters. But in an unsentimental world, that isn’t the same as winning.
Trump Team Sees ‘Major Disarmament’ of North Korea in 2.5 Years
A day after President Trump’s landmark meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore, the two leaders and their governments sought to shape the understanding of their talks to their advantage. But the contours of the vague agreement remained unclear and open to divergent interpretations.
North Korea’s state-controlled news media said that Mr. Trump had agreed to a phased, “step by step” denuclearization process rather than the immediate dismantling of its nuclear capability, with the United States providing reciprocal benefits at each stage along the way. Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he will not lift sanctions until North Korea has rid itself of its nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration, for its part, insisted that the general wording of the joint statement signed by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim committed North Korea to an intrusive inspection regime to confirm its “complete denuclearization.” The statement itself, however, did not explicitly use the words “verifiable” or “irreversible” that had been part of the mantra of American officials leading up to the Singapore summit meeting.
“Let me assure you that the ‘complete’ encompasses ‘verifiable’ in the minds of everyone concerned,” Mr. Pompeo told reporters in Seoul, where he flew to consult with South Korean officials. “One can’t completely denuclearize without validating, authenticating — you pick the word.”
When a reporter pressed and asked for more details about how it would be verified, Mr. Pompeo grew testy. “I find that question insulting and ridiculous and, frankly, ludicrous,” he said.
.. “Just landed — a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea,” he added. “President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer — sleep well tonight!”
.. critics who accused him of getting way ahead of what could be a long, difficult negotiation to translate the gauzy aspiration of Singapore into a workable plan.
.. “The true test of success is whether the follow-on negotiations can close the gap between the United States and North Korea on the definition of denuclearization and lay out specific, verifiable steps that Pyongyang will take to reduce the threat posed by its nuclear weapons.”
.. the North Korean news agency said the two leaders had agreed to a phased process in which Pyongyang would bargain away its nuclear arsenal in stages, securing matching actions from the United States at each step. Such a process has been opposed by American hard-liners like John R. Bolton, now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, who has argued in the past that the North must quickly dismantle and ship out its nuclear weapons program in its entirety, as Libya did more than a decade ago.
.. Mr. Pompeo declined to discuss the North Korean report. “I’m going to leave the content of our discussions as between the two parties, but one should heavily discount some things that are written in other places,” he said.
In Diplomacy, Trump Is the Anti-Reagan
another take is that it’s the Plaza Redux, meaning the 1988 real estate debacle in which Trump hastily purchased New York’s Plaza Hotel because it looked like an irresistible trophy, only to be forced to sell it at a loss a few years later as part of a brutal debt restructuring.
.. “Like Reagan, he seems to sense that the nuclear technicalities matter less than the political relationship.”
.. First, Trump isn’t Reagan.
- Reagan generally acted in concert with allies. Trump brazenly acts against them.
- Reagan’s negotiation method: “Trust but verify.” Trump’s self-declared method: “My touch, my feel.”
- Reagan refused to give in to Soviet demands that he abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative. Trump surrendered immediately to Pyongyang’s long-held insistence that the U.S. suspend military exercises with South Korea while getting nothing in return.
- Reagan’s aim was to topple Communist Party rule in Moscow. Trump’s is to preserve it in Pyongyang.
Second, Kim isn’t Gorbachev.
- Gorbachev was born into a family that suffered acutely the horrors of Stalinism. Kim was born into a family that starved its own people.
- Gorbachev rose through the ranks as a technocrat with no background in the regime’s security apparatus. Kim consolidated his rule by murdering his uncle, half brother and various ministers, among other unfortunates.
- Gorbachev came to office intent on easing political repression at home and defusing tensions with the West. Kim spent his first six years doing precisely the opposite.