It will actually - because the Trump administration flubbed a unique negotiating opportunity with North Korea, because lazy Trump preferred photo-ops to work: learning the issues in enough detail to actually personally negotiate with Kim Jong Un; leading a major presidential /1
effort across the government to move public opinion and encourage the bureaucracy to come up with creative new options (instead of the CVID-for-sanctions non-starter); grooming South Korea instead of alienating it. A real US effort at a NK deal would have looked like Carter’s /2
Camp David Accords efforts: a serious, wide-ranging mobilization across the national security structure to really work a thorny issue, complete with informed, sustained presidential leadership. That doesn’t mean it would have worked; Clinton made a similarly serious effort on /2
the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and still fell short. Nor do I personally believe NK would have given up much without concessions that US and SK right would have found unacceptable. But I might have been wrong. A serious work-up of the issue might have revealed creative new /3
possiblities, or small, achievable deals which could cumulate, generating momentum and trust for larger swaps (a suggestion I made repeatedly: nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-wat…). Who knows if these ideas would have worked - probably not, IMO - but the point is that T never tried. He was /4
too lazy to learn the issues and whip the unwieldy US national security structure into creative new thinking. Instead he believed his own Fox News agitprop that he is some great negotiator and could therefore go to Singapore and Hanoi WITH NO PREPARATION and wheel-and-deal his /5
way through. In other words, he winged it. Does anyone really believe that a nut as hard to crack as NK would suddenly become this easy? Gimme a break. It’s like when Trump said, ‘who knew health care was so hard?’ All NK did is illustrate Trump’s laziness, incompetence, and /6
lack of awareness of the world around him. Who, except Fox News cultists and diehard pro-engagement doves, really thought a lazy, non-reading, TV-watching buffoon like Trump was going to suddenly going to wrap up NK? Maybe this was doomed from the start; the strategic and /7
ideological gaps between the US and NK are huge, and trust is very low. But Trump insured its failure by winging one of toughest issues in US national security. The lesson? Trump would rather watch TV than work, and that’s probably 50% of the problems of his government. END
