Commentary: Trump is 0-2 with his on-the-fly diplomacy with North Korea. Best to stop now

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The US president's reliance on his supposed chemistry with Kim Jong Un, and last minute summit preparations have failed, says Robert E Kelly.

There will be a natural rush by hawks and doves to frame this, respectively, as proof that North Korea is belligerent and overdemanding, or that Trump is inflexible.Both may well be true, but analysts should be careful. We just do not know enough yet; we are not even sure which leader pulled out first, despite Trump’s claim it was him.

In South Korea, Japan, and the US, there are many interest groups and actors with deep commitments – some of them ideological, many hawkish – on North Korea. So the status quo with the North is very deeply entrenched – for moral, ideological, strategic and bureaucratic reasons. US President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un walk in the garden at the Metropole hotel during the second North Korea-US summit in Hanoi, Vietnam February 28, 2019.

Trump needs to use the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to sell this to the many sceptical parties concerned about North Korea. He has to try to bring these groups – US allies, Congress, the think-tanks and media, military elites – along and assuage their fears – that he is abandoning South Korea or Japan, ignoring human rights and abductees, or bending on North Korea to get a deal from China, and so on.

Staff work would presumably fill in these gaps in presidential leadership, but here too Trump has undercut his efforts by throwing these summits together in just a few weeks.Given how deep, serious, and complex the issues between Pyongyang and Washington are, it would be a remarkable bureaucratic feat if the relevant staff work could be done in a month – which is the time Trump gave his team before both the Singapore and Hanoi summits.

 

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