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Evidence keeps on accumulating that Trump’s engagement with N Korea is random, thrown-together, & shallow. He is an increasingly faustian bargain for NK doves: Trump’s substance-free pseudo-diplomacy will tarnish diplomacy as an option in the future. Hawks will use the coming /1
failure to argue that diplomacy doesn’t work. And yes, it will fail, bc Trump is too lazy & disinterested to demand anything beyond a superficial agreement like Sentosa which changes nothing substantive. So the post-Trump hawk line will be that summit diplomacy doesn’t work, /2
that POTUS got played by the North into legitimizing its leadership for nothing. Everyone wants diplomacy to work of course, but Trump is so unserious about it that any deal will likely be made-for-TV-&-Trump’s-reelection while not actually resolving much. That’s the worst of /3
both worlds for engagers: you finally get the POTUS-level engagement you’ve wanted for 3 decades, only to see it immediately discredited by a game show host who just wants TV coverage & couldn’t care less about the issues or Korea. The dovish argument for leader-level summitry /4
presupposed, understandably, a normal POTUS driving a serious process like the C David Accords. But T is utterly incapable of this. The outcome is then is that no process & more strategic patience will likely be judged to have been preferable to T’s pseudo-process. Disappointing.
