President Donald Trump had hoped to head into the 2020 campaign season as the world’s consummate deal-maker. He may instead enter his reelection campaign not just empty-handed, but vulnerable to the charge that his policies have helped sow chaos across the globe.
Photo/White House Flickr
U.S. President Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea on Sunday when he met its leader, Kim Jong Un, in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume stalled nuclear talks.
Seemingly endless threats, insults, punishment, and attempts at coercion have been a leading feature of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The pervasive bullying so far has not been matched by a comparable degree of positive results, as many have noticed. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is no smaller than it was when Trump took office, it’s larger. The trade war with China is escalating rather than being resolved. Policy toward Iran is a multifaceted failure.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s maiden state visit to Pyongyang this week may signal an economic re-engagement with the hermit kingdom, according to Chinese state media. Ahead of the visit, Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily has suggested, via its social media account, that restoring bilateral economic relations would be on the agenda.
Can the United States and North Korea arrive at a deal—any deal—on denuclearization, normalization of relations, or at the very least a nuclear freeze? Given the holding pattern in nuclear diplomacy since the second summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, the prospects don’t appear particularly bright. The hold-up in the talks, however, is not simply the product of personality clashes, maximalist negotiating positions, and incongruent objectives between Washington and Pyongyang. History also has a lot to do with it.
Photo courtesy: White House
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump will conduct their summit over the course of two days in Hanoi, starting with a one-on-one meeting on Wednesday before a dinner that evening. On Thursday, the two leaders will have a “series of back and forth” meetings, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who briefed reporters aboard Air Force One as Trump left the US. The US president is expected to arrive in Hanoi later on Tuesday, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo already in the Vietnamese capital.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
For most of their terms in office, Americans Presidents live in a world filled with more hostility than admiration and more abuse than appreciation. However, few, if any presidents have confronted the opposition to change in any form that President Donald Trump encountered. Trump’s controversial reset of American Foreign Policy in Northeast Asia elicited almost universal contempt.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un began the long train journey to Vietnam on Saturday for his second summit with President Donald Trump, state media reported. The official Korean Central News Agency confirmed early Sunday local time that Kim was en route, accompanied by his sister, Kim Yo Jong, and Kim Yong Chol, who’s been a key negotiator in talks with the U.S. Russia’s TASS news agency reported the North Korean leader’s departure hours earlier, citing a diplomatic official it didn’t identify.
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…three factors are key: establishing common policy ground, forging trusting and respectful personal relationships, and managing leaders’ respective domestic politics. These “three P’s,” other differences among the cases notwithstanding, provide a strategic framework crucial to successful summit diplomacy. While neither Trump’s nor Kim’s record inspires much confidence that these lessons will be drawn, it’d be in their interest – and the world’s – to do so.
