Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un sign historic document: Lifetime of making deals pays off
FOR decades America has refused to grant North Korea’s leaders the legitimacy that would come from meeting the president of the United States. Donald Trump, it goes without saying, is unlike any other president we have seen before, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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“ALL I can say is that they want to make a deal. That’s what I do. My whole life has been deals. I’ve done great at it. That’s what I do.” So said Donald Trump after meeting Kim Jong-un on Tuesday.
It wasn’t just the first summit between a president of the United States and a North Korean leader. It was the summit of a lifetime of deal-making which has taught the former Manhattan property developer when to seize the moment.
And for Kim Jong-un? If he achieves nothing else in his time as dictator, he will go down in history as the man who got the United States to treat North Korea as its equal.
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For decades, until Donald Trump’s entry to the international scene, America has refused to grant the communist hermit kingdom’s leaders the legitimacy that would come from meeting the president of the United States.
It wasn’t just the mismatch in status — one, one of the greatest military and economic powers on earth, and the other, an economic basket case and gangster state which subsists on handouts from its Chinese benefactors across its northern border.
The reluctance also came from the long-term belief among US policy-makers that a sit-down with the leader of the free world should remain off the table until North Korea made concessions — most recently, that it denuclearise.
It was a very good strategy, in theory. But only in theory. In practice, it hasn’t worked.
Not only does North Korea have nuclear weapons, it has an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the continental United States. The only question that divides experts is whether the missiles can yet reach the US with one of Kim’s nukes on board.
To the frustration of successive presidents, this has been allowed to happen while China, the only country with leverage over North Korea, publicly professed opposition to its ally acquiring nuclear weapons, while blocking the international community from imposing crippling sanctions and turning a blind eye to breaches of those sanctions to which the world had agreed.
Trump, it goes without saying, is unlike any other president we have seen before.
Love him or hate him, you have to acknowledge he is a disrupter. Ten months ago, he went off script at a press conference, warning North Korea it had “best not make any more threats to the United States” or “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”.
In January, Kim was still being belittled as the “Rocket man” on the presidential Twitter account.
KIM JONG-UN BRINGS ‘OWN TOILET’ TO SUMMIT
Two months later, the President was junking decades of US policy by announcing that plans for a historic summit were under way.
Then, after announcing the date of the meeting in Singapore, Trump abruptly announced a few weeks ago the whole thing was off because he didn’t like the tone of the remarks coming out of the North Korean regime.
But miraculously, after conciliatory words from the North Korean side, it all was back on again. It was no coincidence that this flurry of diplomatic activity has coincided with Kim twice meeting China’s Xi Jinping.
To Trump, after meeting Kim on Tuesday, the rocket man had become a “a very talented man” who “loves his country very much”.
As we learned later from his interview with president Bill Clinton’s old press secretary, George Stephanopolous, while this was the first time the two men had met, it wasn’t the first time they had spoken — an example of his administration managing to keep a secret, which must almost count as being as big a miracle as the meeting itself, and the deal in which Kim affirmed his “unwavering commitment to complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”
But not only would the deal rid the region of nuclear weapons. As with all good deals you see on TV infomercials, there was more!
The North Koreans were already destroying a major missile engine testing site. “That’s not in your signed document,” Trump glowed. “We agreed to that after the agreement was signed.”
As to whether Kim can be trusted, Trump went back to his history: “I know when somebody wants to deal and I know when somebody doesn’t.
“A lot of politicians don’t. That’s not their thing, but it is my thing … I just feel very strongly — my instinct, my ability or talent — they want to make a deal.”
But if Kim cheats?
“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 excuse.
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