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Trump got played by Kim Jong Un — again

"Pyongyang Is Playing Washington and Seoul"


President Trump attends a news conference following his second summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Feb. 28 in Hanoi. (Tuan Mark/Getty Images)

By Josh Rogin
Columnist
February 28

Trump administration officials constantly say the foreign policy establishment’s decades-long failure with North Korea meant there was no choice but to give Trump’s fresh, personal, top-down method a fair trial. Today the verdict is in. Trump’s approach has failed, and Pyongyang is happily reaping the rewards.

Make no mistake, the collapse of this week’s U.S.-North Korea summit .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-kim-downplay-expectations-as-key-summit-talks-begin/2019/02/28/d77d752c-3ac5-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.f091c987ba07 .. in Hanoi is a win for Kim Jong Un. Trump and his officials are already spinning this as a draw, stating that North Korea has promised to continue its testing moratorium, claiming unspecified progress was made inside the talks and promising the negotiations will continue.

But by securing an extension of the process while giving up nothing on denuclearization, Kim can continue improving his country’s nuclear and missile capabilities, benefit from an ever-eroding sanctions regime and enjoy his elevated status as a newly respected member of the international community.

The real question is: Did Kim plan it this way? Did he lure Trump to Hanoi only to set demands he knew the United States could never agree to, while holding Trump’s hand .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsj9wZW7N7Q .. so he would acquiesce? There’s plenty of evidence that’s exactly what happened.

We know much of this because Trump laid it out in his news conference before heading home. He said Kim had offered to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility but only in exchange for total sanctions relief.

“They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that,” Trump said. “.?.?. We had to walk away from that.”

Trump is correct; that would be a terrible deal. Yongbyon represents a small and antiquated portion of Kim’s nuclear infrastructure. But Trump can’t claim that he was surprised by that bad offer. CNN reported that Trump’s top officials told him for days this was Kim’s position and Kim would not budge.

Special envoy Stephen Biegun had been negotiating with his North Korean counterparts for weeks, but he couldn’t get the North Koreans to do more, like hand over a declaration of what they have. The notion that Trump, charismatic dealmaker that he is, could bridge that gap in a couple of meetings was never plausible.

Contradicting Trump, North Korea’s foreign minister said .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-kim-downplay-expectations-as-key-summit-talks-begin/2019/02/28/d77d752c-3ac5-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.23130a956f9c .. Kim had asked for only partial sanctions relief for shutting down Yongbyon. But even that would have been a bad deal, at least according to Moon Chung-in, a top adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Speaking in Washington this week .. https://www.vox.com/2019/2/26/18241737/trump-north-korea-kim-moon-nuclear-deal , he said, “It’s a good deal for North Korea and a bad deal for the United States.”

No one is pushing harder for a U.S.-North Korea deal than the South Korean government. If it knew the United States could not accept the deal Kim was putting forward, of course Kim knew that as well. He’s evil but not stupid.
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Most likely, Kim’s offer was a poison pill, meant to signal just enough flexibility to get Trump to Hanoi but to ensure that the negotiations would fail. Trump walked directly into the trap and doesn’t even seem to realize it.

On top of all that, Trump committed two huge, unforced errors. He refused to say the negotiation’s goal was to fully denuclearize North Korea. “I don’t want to put myself in that position, from the standpoint of negotiation,” he said. That contradicts everything his officials keep saying and actually weakens his own negotiating position.

Trump also let Kim off the hook for the treatment of Otto Warmbier, the American hostage who died days after being returned from imprisonment in North Korea. By accepting Kim’s claim he wasn’t aware of Warmbier’s treatment, Trump once again believed a dictator over his own officials while undermining any future attempts by Warmbier’s family to hold Kim responsible for their son’s death.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed repeatedly that progress was made in Hanoi but gave zero information on what he was talking about. Inside the administration, there’s already work on a Plan B .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/we-need-a-plan-b-for-north-korea/2018/07/19/527b0af0-8b7b-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.f6aa0abb95ca .. in the (increasingly likely) event that Pompeo’s effort finally fails.

There’s another choice besides this negotiation and going to war — a mix of deterrence, containment and a return to maximum pressure, coordinated with our allies. That’s likely where we will end up anyway and the longer we wait to pivot, the harder it will be.

As Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said, the Hanoi summit showed us “amateur hour with nuclear weapons at stake and the limits of reality-TV diplomacy.”

Trump may see a personal political benefit to dragging out his love affair with Kim and dragging the world along with them on this Sisyphean effort. But the stink of this summit’s failure and the danger of the North Korean threat are only increasing over time. No deal is better than a bad deal — but Trump getting played by Kim again and again is even worse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-got-played-by-kim-jong-un--again/2019/02/28/784a3228-3b8f-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html?utm_term=.8463fb7c39ef

See also:

Fact-checking President Trump’s claims about the North Korea deal
[...]
“We are paying from 60 percent of 90 percent of NATO.”
Nope, nope, nope. Trump never gets this correct.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=141525644

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North Korea's Kim says must deliver 'blow' to those imposing sanctions: KCNA

Joyce Lee April 11, 2019 / 8:11 AM / Updated 15 hours ago

[...]

Moon has suggested that sanctions could be eased to allow inter-Korean economic engagement in return for some nuclear concessions by North Korea, but so far Washington has not agreed.

“It did not directly mention the U.S., but linked sanctions with hostile forces,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “He’s saying North Korea would take an independent course unless the U.S. offered to lift sanctions. You maintain sanctions, you’re a hostile force; if you ease sanctions, you’re not.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa/north-koreas-kim-says-must-deliver-blow-to-those-imposing-sanctions-kcna-idUSKCN1RM2UB

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'Why shouldn't I like him?' Trump piled praise on Kim Jong Un in his first interview since their summit collapsed
Tom Porter Mar. 1, 2019, 6:37 AM
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-praises-kim-jong-un-vietnam-summit-2019-3

h/t DD - Wally Trump is praising Kim Dong Un, right after Un threatened anyone who would support sanctions for him.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148178691

There would be further Trump fuzzies to Kim not included here.

More:

shermann7, Trump, Kim and the North Korean nuclear missile melodrama
[...]
Excerpt
P - This was widely accepted as the paradigm undergirding North Korea’s approach to nuclear development, dating back to the first nuclear crisis of 1993–94. That crisis was eventually resolved when the 1994 Agreed Framework was adopted, shuttering the North’s plutonium-fuelled reactor at Yongbyon and freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear activities under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, in return for supplies of heavy fuel oil and promises to build proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors.[45] The significance of the Agreed Framework as a diplomatic breakthrough in US–North Korea relations, culminating in the October 2000 visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is largely forgotten in the United States. The agreement fell apart following US revelations in 2002 that North Korea was operating a secret uranium-enrichment program.[46] While some have disputed whether North Korea technically infringed the Agreed Framework,[47] that the regime invested in a clandestine uranium enrichment program suggests it was never committed to the goal of denuclearisation. As a result, cheating is widely assumed to be a given of entering into non-proliferation agreements with Pyongyang.[48] Proponents maintain that in exchange for the right mix of material inducements, North Korea’s weapons development would have been substantially slowed, if never completely halted, considerably delaying the day when its nuclear aims would move out into the open.
P - Kim Jong-un began to ramp up the missile and nuclear development programs he inherited from his father shortly after taking the reins in December 2011. The inflection point came in 2012, with the decision to constitutionally enshrine North Korea’s status as a “nuclear state and an unchallengeable military power”.[49] By committing his prestige at such an early stage, Kim Jong-un was effectively hitching his leadership to the overt acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them. With the weight of the Kim dynasty legacy officially behind it, North Korea’s nuclear deterrent was henceforth irreversible, in North Korean terms. At a December 2017 ceremony, bestowing awards on the scientists behind North Korea’s apparently successful ICBM design, the Hwasong-15, Kim Jong-un committed to further “bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity”.[50] Subsequent North Korean statements have repeated claims to be a nuclear weapon state.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=141107196
[...]
Infrastructure Improvements at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=144264798

How Cheney and His Allies [Bolton prominent] Created the North Korea Nuclear Missile Crisis
""Donald Trump deserves ‘little credit’ for North and South Korean peace agreement, experts say""
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