Tensions with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un threaten to blight President Trump’s foreign policy record as his 2020 reelection bid shifts into full gear
President Donald Trump is pulling out all the stops to convince North Korea to return to nuclear talks – delaying military exercises, ambushing efforts to highlight the regime’s human rights abuses and sending a top envoy to the region to reassure jittery allies.
“Tactically, the election plays a role and the whole impeachment process plays a role,” said Jung Pak, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer now with the Brookings Institution. “Kim probably sees Trump as being hemmed in domestically and more desperate for a deal.” While in South Korea, Biegun urged North Korea to jump-start negotiations, which have gone nowhere since Trump and Kim held a truncated February summit in Vietnam.Biegun said the U.S. is well aware of North Korea’s plans for a “Christmas gift,” which analysts and officials say could range from a space satellite launch to an ICBM test. But Biegun also said the U.S. won’t put a time limit on negotiations as Kim appears to have done.
The tweet – an extraordinary appeal to an adversary that regularly threatens to incinerate U.S. cities – didn’t appear to have the intended effect. North Korean officialsby calling Trump “heedless and erratic” and reprising their past insinuations that he may be going senile. They also said his tweets were “corroboration that he feels fear.”
While the two signed a vague joint statement on denuclearization in Singapore, the relationship stumbled in Vietnam. There, Trump refused to agree to lift numerous U.S. sanctions on North Korea in exchange for what U.S. officials said were limited curbs on its nuclear program. The summit ended early, without a clear plan for the next step. Since then, despite Trump and Biegun’s appeals, and despite the June meeting, there’s been little progress.
“Trump will be forced to act and act in a strong way,” predicted Joseph Yun, a former U.S. special representative for North Korea Policy.Trump and his aides have taken several, norm-shattering steps to end the decades-old, seemingly intractable U.S. conflict with North Korea. That includes having Trump become the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader and the first to set foot on North Korean soil.
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