The bromance between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un is fizzling.
earlier this month, “I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostilely. [Kim] knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that. … I think he’d like to see something happen”—presumably “something” that would promote peace and thus give Trump a triumph worth celebrating in a reelection campaign.
In other words, the North Koreans are not going to get rid of their nuclear weapons. They haven’t even committed to taking the first step toward the slightest reduction of their nuclear arsenal—which would be to itemize just how many weapons they have now, and where they are, so that inspectors could verify the cuts as they’re made.
“Kim could not have had it any better these last two years,” Pak says. “He had a South Korean president eager for improved relations, a U.S. president who wanted good relations and who was criticizing the alliances. But Kim squandered it. He wants all or nothing. It’s just the way he is. People have kowtowed toward him his entire life.”
But, as the impasse at Hanoi showed, Trump may not be as pliant as Kim assumes. Kim above all wants sanctions lifted, but Trump hasn’t relaxed them in the slightest. Nor has he leapt to take up Kim’s invitation to Pyongyang . One distinction about dealing with Kim, as opposed to Putin or the Saudi royals, may be thatin Trump’s entourage—not in the government or Congress, or among his friends at Fox News—favors giving breaks to North Korea without major concessions on nuclear disarmament.
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