David Michael Miller
I dislike almost everything about Donald Trump. His presidency has been an exhausting spectacle. He is, overall, terrible at his job.
But like the proverbial dumb jock who aces PE, Trump has excelled in one — exactly one — of his presidential responsibilities. Recent developments confirm that he is precisely the person we need in charge of the North Korea situation.
Though it was good news, the vacillating announcement last week of a possible summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un was hardly the epochal foreign policy moment some have made it out to be. The leaders of North Korea have always wanted to talk with the leaders of the U.S., and Trump reportedly agreed to this latest request on impulse.
But the North Korean leadership really has displayed a shift in attitude over these past few months. In early January, it reopened a long-dormant communications hotline across the Demilitarized Zone. In February, North Korean athletes marched with their Southern counterparts in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. And in early March, according to a South Korean diplomat, the North “made clear its willingness to denuclearize the Korean peninsula,” and agreed to a summit with the South Korean president.
Whether these overtures are sincere is beside the point. (Given North Korea’s disgraceful history as a diplomatic partner, they are almost certainly not.) What is important is that North Korea has — at least temporarily — swerved off of the horrifying trajectory it was on.
Since Kim Jong Un came to power, and through last year, North Korea’s international relations centered on nuclear weapons tests and violent threats. President Obama reportedly warned President-Elect Trump that North Korea’s growing nuclear capability would be his most urgent problem.
Just a few months later, intelligence officials determined that North Korea would probably be able to strike the U.S. mainland within a year. This news signified a failure of historic magnitude. For several decades, the whole of American policy toward North Korea — the hopeful talks, supposed deals, and feckless warnings — had been geared toward averting this eventuality.
Enter President Trump. Instead of following the failed playbook of his steady-handed predecessors, he met Kim’s childish rhetorical provocations with childish rhetorical provocations of his own. He ratcheted up U.S. sanctions, and pushed the United Nations to do the same. He issued over-the-top threats, using language never before heard from an American president.
Audacious politicians from Machiavelli to Richard Nixon have subscribed to the ‘Madman Theory,’ which holds that strategic displays of aggressive unpredictability can subdue an adversary.
With or without strategic intention, Trump bombards North Korea with madness. Kim and his henchmen have surely reached the same conclusion that many Americans have: Trump really is capable of anything. He may be full of bluster, but his erratic nature is no bluff.
Late last year, a White House source told The Daily Telegraph that preparations for a military attack on North Korea had “dramatically” stepped up in the months prior. Would Trump strike, despite the near-certainty that Seoul would be flattened in response? Consider that he regularly does things his predecessors could barely fathom. And that he has committed to neutralizing the North Korea threat. And that he has a pathological fear of losing face.
Or maybe Trump would never launch a first strike, no matter what. The point is, no one knows, probably not even Trump himself.
Despite their reputation for lunacy, the Kim cabal has an almost unblemished record of strategic shrewdness. They are the rational ones in this standoff. And for the first time in a long time, they are under credible threat. To push Trump the wrong way could mean their deaths. And to strike South Korea preemptively would be outright suicide. So they have stopped with the missile tests and adopted a conciliatory posture.
Moreover, they have cracked open their door to Donald Trump, the greatest disrupter in modern times. Over the next couple months, Trump will torment them with fickleness, as he alternately boasts about the summit and threatens to call it off. And he will, of course, continue to freak everyone out with discussions of “ominous alternatives” to diplomatic engagement. By the time the meeting actually happens, Kim will just be relieved that it came off.
The volatile summit process could, conceivably, warp the dynamics among North Korea’s ruling elite, leaving it vulnerable to destabilization. Or the whole thing could, instead, prove a disaster for the U.S. One thing is certain: If we refuse to take some last-ditch risks, we will soon be hostage to a chronically maladjusted, amoral regime. As South Korea can attest, that’s a dreadful position to be in.
We put up with a lot of crazy from Donald Trump. Finally, this once, the crazy’s going to work for us.
Michael Cummins as a Madison-based business analyst.
