Why is the media still acting as if Donald Trump has a strategy? About anything? Remember his advocacy of the “birther” movement? That collection of oddballs and idiots who denied President Obama was born in Hawaii? He didn’t abandon the delusion until after he was nominated for president! Other similar lunatic ideas emanate from the White House on a regular basis. An individual prone to conspiracy theories is willfully ignorant, and incurious, and basically frightened of the unknown. That is why they believe (or concoct) their conspiracies: it brings them comfort. Remember: reality frightens them. So, isn’t it past time to stop looking for logical reasons Trump may have for his erratic behavior? We all know he’s nuts, but let’s drill in on the reason.
3
The deification of Reagan still astounds me. At the time he was a B movie actor who was a puppet for some very smart conservative "Powers". But at least the people running him weren't stupid. And they sure did an awesome job of creating the essential american hero myth. I suppose we can only regret there isn't a similar consortium running conservative politics today
Trump on the other hand is accelerating moving us on to a new world order, which may be just as well, altho probably a bit rough on his "Base"
1
Upon reflection, Trump wanted these talks before the November elections more than accomplishing anything substantial. Keeping Republicans in majorities in Congress is his top priority. The optics of this meeting could surely do this. Whether North Korea agrees to give up nuclear weapons and ICBMs could wait in his mind. If Kim and China are happy with his concessions, then they will not create any issues for a while that would make this agreement look poorly.
2
To me, the true parallel is his the Plaza Hotel purchase,not the Reagan/ Gorbachev meeting. For all the reasons masterfully outlined by Stephens here and also because with the Plaza purchase, Trump had a sinister short term objective, namely to give his wife Ivana an all-consuming project in Manhattan so that he could carry on with Marla Maples outside her glance. Even if the deal went sour later, that short term goal was achieved. Here his short-term objective is the midterms. If the North Korea deal eventually fails may well be secondary.
3
And Reagan wasn’t “Reagan” when he was Reagan.
2
Well said, Bret.
Hope you're wrong... but I believe you are right.
(Now domestically, if we can just get you to understand that Health Care is a human right and not an entitlement, we can move you even closer to the middle).
6
There are so many things wrong with this article it should be removed.
1) No, Trump is not trying to preserve Kim's dictatorship. Unlike the soviet Union (which was going backkrupt), North Korea can be subsidized indefinitely by China. You cannot "bring it down" directly.
2) Conservatives don't have Trump derangement. The media and Hollywood have Trump derangement. Just look a DeNiro for today's latest example of that.
3) Military exercises are an easy concession. No reduction in military presence, and these can be resumed anytime. This is a bargain. How a journalist could conclude that Trump got "outfoxed" is beyond comprehension.
4) Claiming Trump is "my touch my feel" is again incredibly off the mark. Trump had only a few hours to meet with Kim Jong Un. The main purpose is to obtain a general agreement and open the door to future positive communications. Trump achieved both of these.
5) Claiming Trump is merely acting out of a self-indulgent desire to get a Nobel prize is pure conjecture serving a liberal agenda. Frankly an imbecelic analysis if I've ever seen one.
6) All other parallels are false equivalencies between the Soviet Union and NK. In the case of NK, the assymetry between a small country and a superpower changes the landscape of negotiations. How Bret managed to miss that elephant in the room speaks volume. I could go on for hours but I think journalism is now a parody of its former self.
Normally I would say that being the "anti-Reagan" is a very good idea. But these are not normal times...
"May you live in interesting times". Indeed....
Reagan started a defense spending war with Gorbachev. It was a race to who would go bankrupt first. We had bigger pockets and Gorbachev had to give in.
It was no bargain for us either , it resulted in Bush 1 having to raise taxes that resulted in his being a one term President.
So neither Reagan or Trump is and was a bargain for us.
4
Mr. Reagan did not start this war and Warsaw Pact did not loose the Cold War by a "defense spending war" started by Mr. Reagan.
GDR was already bankrupt in 1982, Poland also. Both were saved by Western credits ("Strauß-Kredit") then to avoid upheavals and Russian interventions for compensatory humanitarian measures in return. (BTW: This is called "deal!")
The Warsaw Pact lost the Cold War at the end of the 80ties because Eastern states were unable to use this second chance due their progressive dysfunctionality they were openly unable to eliminate. Not only regular population but particularly well educated managers in all Eastern countries - Russia included - knew there would be no third chance any more.
When even "SED-Parteikader" had to transport spare parts to the machines by their private motorbikes in the mid 80ties and couldn´t get spare parts for their permanently overloaded bikes even by their best personal "Stasi"-links ("Your problem") all knew: This had been "The end." This was long before "Wende 1989". Russians were fully aware - by their regular boozings by the way - and told same stories from home expressing the same feelings. All were aware of Western credits in 1982/83 and so of the failure of their second chance.
So support faded away and the whole system imploded. Then it was self-inflicted. Mr. Kohl and Mr. Reagan (!) gave them a second chance in 1982.
American authorities were fully aware of this. At present American society is not all. Sad.
"Is Kim Jong-un taking advantage of President Trump’s hunger for a deal with him?"
Does fire burn?
Is water wet?
Is fat meat greasy?
Will the sun rise in the east tomorrow morning?
8
Reagan leads to Trump. We could remove Trump tomorrow, but 100% of the factors that created him remain intact, including the fact that Reagan was a bit of a low-empathy bully, who reduced the power of everyday Americans whether by giving it away to the corporations or doing his best to take down unions.
The Reagan myth must die, or this country has no chance. Yes, Reagan understood that America was great, but he did not understand the real reasons for it.
12
Van Cliburn had more to do with improving the relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev than the president himself. Cliburn - still beloved throughout the USSR for winning the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition - had not performed publicly for nearly a decade; but he came out of retirement to play for the Gorbachevs in the White House. Gorbachev and Raissa, his wife at the time, beamed with delight when Cliburn played "Moscow Nights." The Cold War underwent a deep thaw that evening. Sort of like Dennis Rodman and Kim Jung Un.
4
I think its great that these two men are talking and not threatening each other. In person is fine. Since from my point of view both the U.S. and North Korea should be denuclearized its a step in the right direction. Absolutely no assurance that an accidental detection or firing happens but you cannot expect much out of such a meeting. This will help Trump's reelection chances and from that point of view its a bad thing. In the scheme of things I suspect it means little
1
Bret,
Ah, what would we do without "experts" like you who find a dark cloud in every silver lining?
We should call him the "Surrenderer-in-Chief". Trump got NOTHING for America. He needs to stop spreading his lies about his "accomplishment". Trump is a fool who is only serving the interests of North Korean and Chinese propaganda. He will surrender all of Asia to brutal totalitarian regimes while attacking Western liberal democracies. Pathetic!
7
Predictably, Stephens exhibits the kind of selective amnesia that ensures his invitations to the good Republican parties this summer. In the intellectual history of the recent GOP, Donald Trump takes all his cues from that regrettable example who came after Reagan, and whom the Republicans are desperate to forget: George W. Bush. Bush was the Decider. Bush was the gut-thinker, the go-it-aloner, the privileged Yalie in costume cowboy boots, the one who looked in the mirror and saw a majority. The differences between Bush and Trump are matters of degree and personal decorum, but politically they are two examples of the very sort of nihilistic anti-factuality that has given Bret Stephens a tidy living off these pages and an inexplicable position in them.
5
His "North Korea has denuclearized" twitter of this morning is much like Mission Accomplished, but at least W had the self-restraint to wait until the banner was printed.
2
Sorry, but nothing else could be, or could ever be, expected from Trump. That has been clear for at least two years.
5
What if a deal with Kim Jung Un and potential Nobel peace prize makes Trump appear as a legitimate leader and helps him get reelected? The North Korean leader's game here is the same as Putin's: help Trump in order to destroy if not the US at least the intergovernmental organizations and multilateral agreements that have imperiled North Korea's existence. The threat of nuclear weapons wasn't working and risked mutual annihilation, but with Trump a danger to the U.S. and already an opponent of intergovernmental organizations, folks like Putin and Kim have the upper hand using only soft power (or software power). Even if Kim has to concede nuclear weapons, it is a small price to pay for precipitating the destruction of the US economy, or the dismantling of the current geopolitical order and reducing the G-7 and UN. etc. to mere shells with the authority of a PTA board. Supporting Trump in his strong man politics ultimately refashions the geopolitical order such that despots like Kim Jung Un might gain global power with no checks from any international group. The UN is then replaced by strongmen making deals that benefit themselves. Odd as it seems, maybe we are better off in the long term living in fear of nuclear war than having Trump strike a deal with North Korea.
7
Yes, we have the best friends in the Western Europe!
We helped them win the WWI.
We helped them win the WWII.
We helped them rebuild after the WWII through the Marshall plan
We helped them win the Cold War.
We helped them wage their colonial wars in Indochina.
We helped them oppress and control their old oil-rich colonies in the Middle East.
We opened for them our domestic market so their corporations could grow and advance.
We subsidized their defense efforts through the NATO so they could reinvest all the savings into the growth of their economy.
We piled up the colossal national debt so the western world could advance faster.
If we lost them would we be able to ever again find such good friends?
President Trump is so insensitive and incapable of recognizing all their sacrifices!
1
“Peace for our time.” Neville Chamberlain.
3
I'm confident that Mr. Trump's read on Mr. Kim is every bit as accurate as the one W got from looking into Putin's eyes.
6
This is all just so Trump can spout off on Fox "News" about what a good negotiator he is. It's the Fake President with a fake "victory." And his base will believe anything he says.
5
The Singapore Summit achieved three things for sure: Its vague agreements were pleasing to North Korea, China and Russia.
3
The red scare, and subsequent cold war was a reaction from the power elite in the US, afraid the communist system would somehow gain traction with the US public and threaten to change capitalism. It was not based on fear of a Russian attack or Russian world domination.
I hesitate to give Mr. Reagan credit for ending the cold war when he did so much to further incite it while in office.
I do admit that Mr. Reagan had a good natured, honest, demeanor which is the opposite of Mr. Trump's demeanor.
3
When Trump says "gut" and "feel" he means ego" and "wallet."
6
Shorter Stephens: Two proudly ignorant, self-serving, dishonest men meet and use one another for nothing more than a dramatic photo op to promote themselves. End of story.
7
I was never a fan of Reagan given his toxic “trickle down” theory, Iran-contra and many other issues during his presidency. However, when compared side by side with Trump, that grand negotiator, Reagan appears to be a genius. Trump? Given his whacky performance at the G6 plus a moron and his grand show in Singapore, he does provide truth to the musings of Pickens as referenced in the piece along with reaffirming that Trump is a first rate nincompoop.
Trump is a sucker, a sucker without peer. However, his con artistry is amazing given all of those he has swooning over his every toddler tweet.
But, we won something in Canada (higher prices of goods affected by tariffs) and Singapore (proof Trump is a dotard).
The winning......
2
This con man hates being a President, but he adores being Trump
3
As long as a person like Trump can get elected President, our democracy is in great peril regardless of whether there is a blue wave this fall or not.
Impeachment is one thing. Conviction in the Senate is quite another. Impeachment without conviction will cement a Trump dynasty and end our republic.
6
The review of Reagan and Trump having a similar lack of knowledge about international diplomacy reveals more about the average American voter than we like to admit. The ability of unqualified candidates getting the Republican nomination for President and then convincing voters in the general election that it doesn't matter reveals a major flaw in our electoral process. Unlimited money in elections is a big mistake rather than requiring a well regulated time and spending process. Our founding fathers could not have anticipated that we would have anything like our current system. Time to modernize and reform our country's elections!
7
If the allies were the countries giving us the valuable, accurate and good advices, then we have no single friend in the West.
The only two that could be counted as the friends were German Chancellor Schroder and French President Shirak that tried to prevent us from invading Iraq in 2003.
Everybody else acted as the vultures trying to secure their piece of meat for a lunch…
How come that the NATO didn’t stop us from invading the socialist countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya?
The NATO cannot be a political organization but the defensive alliance, thus the NATO cannot be in charge of advancing the political and social agenda across the world.
It means they should have stopped the invasions that overthrew the stable socialist government and created the lawlessness exploited by the ISIS, resulting in turning many millions people into the refugees flooding Europe and the USA.
How come we haven’t heard a single “Mea Culpa” over the last two decades?
The generals are supposed to sacrifice personally to protect their countries, not to betray the homeland to save own careers within the NATO.
Can anybody speak the truth in this world?
Do we at least know how the friends and patriots look like?
The US does what it wants. It wanted to "liberate" Kuwait, it wanted to invade Afghanistan, it wanted to invade Iraq. Don't try and blame anyone else for these actions
1
Can anyone imagine the GOP reaction if Obama had this meeting? the GOP even condemned his successful meeting with Castro which opened relations with Cuba and allowed US citizens to travel there. Of course Trump has already trashed that agreement just as he has trashed every single decent thing the last legally elected president accomplished. Let's face it, decency doesn't exist in Trump's very limited vocabulary or in his heart.
8
Trump's motives are pretty clear (though yeah if he could get a Nobel Peace Prize--take that Obama!--that would make it ever so much sweeter): his company is making money out of his presidency. He isn't after world peace and he thinks America itself is a for-profit enterprise. War readiness games are a waste of money. He just needs to get Kim to imagine the (Trump) condos on the beach. It's all a real estate deal. He said as much during the campaign, that he is the only person to make money running for president. He may have damaged the brand in the west but think of all those new markets and I don't think he is too worried about the economic benefits trickling down.
5
As Mr. Stephens says, this summit has already delivered in several tangible ways for Kim. All Trump got was his desired spectacle (which may be sufficient for Trump, and is anything but for the rest of us).
Trump's unilateral (and impulsive) call for a halt to military exercises with South Korea without first consulting either our own military personnel or our affected allies in the region demonstrates a dangerous short-sightedness (not to mention discourtesy and impropriety) for a president.
Call me skeptical, but I don't expect this meeting to yield benefits to the U.S. As borne out by Trump's decades in business, he has the anti-Midas effect. Everything he touches turns to (what word may I use in this forum?) garbage.
7
Very thoughtful, with a few caveats. Gorbachev did not serve in the security apparatus, but his patron was KGB chief Andropov, who understood that his country was losing faith in communism (due to his spying on its citizens), and who hated corruption, both true of Gorbachev as well. Regarding Reagan -- he surrounded himself with some very smart men who started thin on the ground but gradually developed the expertise to carry the Geneva event off. They understood Reagan's rhetorical skills, and respected him despite his weaknesses. Trump is unable to build such a community of respectful expertise.
3
Rocket man sees Trump as the greatest God Father the world has ever seen and how he can become the the greatest son of the God Father the world has ever seen and unlike Gorby easily replaced no one can over through the great visionary leader he is to create even a greater Singapouressss the world has ever seen not having all the slight bumps on the road that The Soviet Union has had for the past 40 years their transition and it is an easy choice for the Rocket man to make :stay in their orbit of the Elite China leadership with their elite noses high in the air where the only usefulness The Rocket man has is to be used to threaten America with nuke destruction whenever China leadership snaps their fires or ROCKECT up to becoming the NEW SINGAPOURSSSS with the aproval of the greatest GOD FATHER the world has ever seen
Which would you chose ,Stephen if you were in his position?
And all Trump has to do is provide TOTAL MAFIA protection for him and Taiwan
Sure it is a dangerous game to take the great Dragon's pets out of His Satanic orbit with the dragon's secret super power strategy made possible when Nixon went to china
The obligatory possibility that Donald Trump is light years ahead of everyone else aside, the more likely outcome will be that North Korea will agree in principle to freeze their nuclear program with no verification and that will have to suffice. Unlike tax cuts or healthcare Donald Trump owns this and cannot blame Congress, the deep state, or crooked media in the event that the outcome is not what he would like. Donald Trump is sitting on a dormant volcano and sometimes a dormant volcano will remain dormant for decades, other times not.
2
As I've commented many times the only way Trump gets rid of the devastating investigation against him is to be able to put the country under martial law. This will be done. Trump knows full well that Kim Jong has absolutely no intention of denuclearizing and therefore will do something in the near future that will give Trump the excuse he needs to say: "see? I told you so. There's no way to protect ourselves from North Korea's nukes than to take them out militarily". And so it will begin. Trust me.
2
Yes; precisely. Thanks for your contribution today.
With apology for mixing fruit and nuts, it is probably sour grapes to recall what a boss once remarked: Even a blind hog can root an acorn every onc't in a while.
I hope you're wrong, too, but as an advice columnist once advised a person trying to save a dysfunctional relationship: when someone shows you who the are over and over, believe it.
2
One thing that Brett failed to mention is why would Kim agree to liberalize and capitalize his country when such actions would almost invariably lead to a revolt from an imprisoned citizenry that would have inflated expectations of economic improvement and some freedom of movement. Kim's days would likely be numbered from the first day of any peace treaty signed.
If Kim has been willing to kill to maintain power, how can détente with the US and the destruction of his nuclear weapons insure his power? Unless Kim is a secret altruist, it is unlikely that he cares more for his country than for himself. So, it makes no sense for him to give up his nuclear weapons unless he truly believes that the US will wage war to eliminate these weapons. More likely, Kim is playing the old game of smile, stall and talk without taking any concrete action to meet US demands. Just like the Iran agreement, the US is being played again!
1
The identical negotiations with Kim Jong Un and the same outcome would have been the great result if only Obama did it…
We have witnessed the same approach to Cuba, Iran and North Korea but completely opposite reactions depending whether the process was handled by the Republican or the Democrat…
Those putting their party above the national interests should not be construed as the patriotic individuals but just as the partisan hawks…
3
Sixth,North Korea is no Soviet Union.Or,as Mondale said to Gary Hart during the 1984 campaign...where's the beef?North Korea is nowhere near the threat to the world that the Soviet Union was to the US.Remember the Cuban missile crisis? How would Trump handle something like that?Mr Kim,who is not crazy,knows he'd be toast in 5 minutes were he to launch any sort of missile strike.A volatile and unhinged Trump is probably a bigger potential danger to the world.The meeting between the two of them was just a photo op in order to feed their base.Trump,who lost the Plaza,bankrupted four times, started a fraudulent university,fell to the point where all he could do was get his name on hotels other people owned, is not a great deal maker by any standard.I sense that Trump's "big talk" is not going to play as well on world stage as it does with his ever growing Republican base.I just hope we can get through his reign without any serious crises.Just wait until he can't control the narrative.But will it be too late?
2
Another foreign-policy parallel is Trump's "appeasement" of North Korea with Obama's "appeasement" of Iran - both with the same aim. But how typical of the Republicans to cheer the North Korea deal, while condemning the Iran deal And how Trumpian of Trump to pursue the former, while jettisoning the latter (just because his predecessor did it).
1
Bush 43 applied the same diagnostic procedure to Putin by "looking into his soul."
That turned out well.
6
Trump's touchy feely diplomacy would be fine if he were only gambling with a luxury hotel, but here America's safety is on the line. When he failed in business, he had the bankrupt courts to bail him out. There is no such reprieve for the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles or San Francisco. Kim Jung Un must have laughed all the way to his missile test sites.
See: RevolutionOfReason.com
TheRogueRevolutionist.com
5
Does anyone want to bet that Trump is planning on a Trump hotel in Korea?
2
No! He wants a resort and golf course on North Korea's coast.
2
Mar a Lago is coming up after Kim has a few golf lessons courtesy of Pompano, maid in waiting. An oh-so-White House visit will be too dreary; Melania may not have left for New York in time. Stormy ought to offer her services to Kim and the Donald, instead of a "tea" party maybe "something that rhymes" party? With voyeur Puti filming?
Again, it's all about the ratings. We have an entire country transfixed by the daily dose of shock and awe that our impresario-in-chief dishes out daily. Tow the idolatry line... you see the races throughout the country lining up Trump-or-the-highway for Republicans. Actually there are no more Republicans, there are only those in the Cult-of-Trump and capital "L" losers who have a conscience... and Democrats.
Appealing to the disenfranchised looking for bread and circuses, an electorate of the anencephaly stricken addicted to reality TV, opioids, smartphones and social media. The dumb-down of America is complete. It's all about the ratings.
5
sorry to nitpick but it's:
toe the line
(also: rein in, not reign in (as in hell rather than serving in heaven, another common error, not here tho')
1
While growing up in India in 50s and 60s , we used hold Americans in awe. Having lived in USA for more than 30 years I am awed by the level of shear ignorance prevalent here to elect the character like Trump. In India the people knew what they didn't know.
8
Brooks's recent column talked about the rise of "wolf" leaders, people like alpha wolf Putin, second raters like Kim, and our comparative puppy of a president. They believe in self interest above common good and only work together when there is an immediate and tangible benefit.
The problem with this metaphor, and behavior, is that it's stupid. Actually wolves even know better. They form packs and care for each other. There is more strength in common bonds and shared goals than in savage individualism.
Trump senses this, but he's trying to build his pack out of the wrong animals. These aren't wolves. They don't cooperate or think ahead. These are rats. Kim happily ate his relatives. Putin would put his mother in an iron maiden if he felt like it would increase his power and influence.
Our president is basically a soft, juicy rat - rich, succulent, vulnerable, irresistible to the meaner rats. They're already taking nibbles. Kim got the first obviously visible chomp.
While they have their little feeding frenzy, the rest of us should act like wolves, work together, vote, and fix this, and hope they do each other enough damage to mitigate their impact on the rest of us.
1
I wasn't a Reagan fan nor his trickle down economics, however, on the global stage he was about tearing down walls not building them. Trump and his fellow GOP'ers don't like the Iran deal and have walked away from it, but now we have their pathetic version of dealing with rogue states. It's time for the GOP to retire from public life.
2
It’s extremely funny when the liberal NYT columnists are trying to teach Donald Trump how to wage diplomacy by offering the leaders from the past as a template.
Those guys have accomplished the phenomenal results!
Armistice with North Korea lasting since 1953
The Israeli-Palestinian conflicts since 1948
The support for the dictatorial Shah regime in Iran that resulted in the rise of the Ayatollahs in the traditionally most progressive country in the Middle East
Support for the apartheid in South Africa
Waging the hopeless war in defense of the French colonial rule in Indochina.
Support for the Taliban in the overthrow of the moderate socialist regime in Kabul in the eighties
Support for the most radical fundamentalist Wahhabist regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt in effort to suppress the modernization and social progress across the Arab world.
Occupation of Afghanistan (a non-Arab country) after being attacked on the 9/11 by the Wahhabi terrorists from the allied states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Invasion of Iraq to destroy the non-existent WMD and the radical Wahhabism in that moderate socialist country.
Destabilization and overthrow of the socialist regimes in Syria and Libya that created lawlessness exploited by the ISIS.
Support for the military coup in Egypt against democratically elected government
What’s the correct conclusion?
If those “bright” leaders praised by the NYT did nothing, this world would have been much better and safer place!
2
Come on, Kim has no legitmacy - none. He is a murderous dictator, no better than Stalin or Hitler. You cannot TRUST a man who is willing to order murder in order to maintain his hold on power. Just as you cannot trust Putin or Basheer al Assad, you cannot put stock in ANYTHING Kim says. He will say and do anything to keep his hold on power because that is what he values above all. Oddly enough, you could say the same thing about Trump. Perhaps that is the common ground that brought them together. And whatever happened to the infamous US government assertion: We don't negotiate with terrorists.
2
Trumps gift to America - the Art of Schlemiel.
1
Trump is a dictator and is nuts like all dictators. Let' see there's Statlin, Castro, Putin, the Chinese dictators and Hitler. Now Trump. Don't try to figure them out, if you're normal, you can't. He's looking for world domination and for all the world to bow down to him. I have no doubts he would kill his enemies if he could. Maybe he wants to join the other bad guys and rule over us. I'm predicting WWIII if Republicans don't do their patriot duty and get him out. He's making private alliances with our enemies. Telling N Korea we will stop military exercises is the last straw. Asia is worried as is America. Why are Republicans following Trump? All you'll get is a treet not death. But don't wait too long, it's getting dangerous.
3
Ronald Reagan was president 30 years ago. Anyone as tired of hearing and reading about him as I am? He really wasn't "all that," but for most Republican and conservative pundits he is still the gold standard of fabulous Republicaness. Can we move on to what IS? And that is: Trump! What are you going to do about it?
1
The American media repeatedly gives credit to Reagan for the phrase "Trust but verify" , but it's a very old Russian expression.
2
Ask Ivanka. She's up on Chinese proverbs. lol.
2
Trump trumps with his photo op with Kim.
However, I can't imagine a Nobel Peace prize for a photo op.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In fact, any progress with North Korea will surely take a lot of time and effort. A Nobel prize at this point might actually hinder the long process of moving towards disarmament.
Still, I give Trump credit for the photo op and his great ability to totally dominate the news cycle, daily.
Hopefully, Democrats are waking up for the 2018 election...
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1
I never could stand Donald J. Trump. I still feel the same but we agree on one important strategy for dealing with North Korea and Russia. "Keep your enemies closer"
Trump is also ahead of most of his advisers when he says
Our war games that take place very close to North Korea are "very provocative"
If you don't agree with that, then see how you feel when Russia and Iran play war games 200 miles from Washington D.C. with their soldier,sailors,marines landing craft,war planes,ships, subs,bombs and artillery all "just practicing" just a few hundred miles from our border.
What's good for the American goose is also good for the Russian,Iranian,N.Korean "ganders" just practicing on the shores of Canada.
It's just possible that Canada's leader, Justin Trudeau, might allow those "exercises" right about now. Our president put him in that mood.
1
Bret, I didn't read past your first paragraph. What led to the end of the cold war was the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union.
With this summit, Republicans have acknowledged that that are responsible for a nuclear-armed North Korea. Whenever the possibility of negotiation was brought up before the Republicans made such a stink about it that the idea was killed. They wanted us to think it was because they are strong security patriots. Turns out it’s just because they wanted a Republican to do the negotiating. So, years go by and North Korea gets enough nukes and technology to attack the US. And then Trump strolls in and gives Kim for free everything he and his family have ever wanted.
If Obama had been able to talk with N Korea and made the kind of deal Trump made the Republican howls would circle the globe. Congressional investigations would last for years, through multiple election cycles, and we’d forever hear about how “weak” the president is in the face of a tin-pot dictator. And we would all watch breathlessly to find out what the polls are saying about voter sentiment in red states because of what just happened.
As we have seen again and again, Republicans are not interested in governing the country. (Check out the latest post tax-cut wage growth reports.) They are only interested in providing for their kind. It’s so petty, so dangerous, that a little over 40% of Americans believe and act simply out of spite and greed. And what’s worse is that the rest of us let them get away with it.
3
I just cannot even imagine how outraged the right would be if Obama had done what Trump did -- even as many on the right express concern they hedge it in a way that shows that he is being graded on a different curve. I was relieved to see that the National Review was opining that Trump got taken by Kim but I feel pretty confident that the tone of outrage would have been far less measured if it had been done by a Democrat. And I don't think you can say that the left leaning media has been overly harsh on Trump on this issue because however embarrassing what just happened was it seems less terrifying that the fire and fury talk.
4
The main difference between Obama and Trump can be seen through Obama's Iran deal. Obama would have given billions of dollars up-front for nothing, then agreed to a very weak inspection regime and a sunset clause for NK to resume operations. Indeed, this would have outraged Conservatives, and almost certainly would have led to nuclear war.
Kim is actually following Reagan. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative gave him leverage with Gorbachev (and he refused to give it up at the time). Kim's nuclear weapons give him leverage over Trump (and he's unlikely to give them up any time soon).
Reagan won, which led to the present pseudo-dictatorship. Kim wins if he doesn't make concessions that upset his military. His dictatorship will last for his lifetime, subject to the same condition.
Trump, the self-appointed great dealmaker, has, I think, been fleeced by Kim. North Korea is playing a long game. Trump can't seem to see past the mid-terms. This grandiose summit will leave nothing in its wake but US concessions, a tattered relationship with allies on both sides of the continent, and a further opportunity for China to cement its position as economic and political heavyweight.
5
Throwing a extreme present-hedonist at Asia is the silliest thing I have seen the US do yet.
1
Reagan's diplomacy didn't do much. The economic problems of the Soviets hastened by their invasion of Afghanistan pushed Gorbachev to change. Trump created his own problem and then decided to solve it.
3
The US broke up the USSR by arming the Afghan rebels to humiliate it in the Graveyard of Empires.
So far it is a success for Trump. Trump pushed Kim to a corner. Kim has to chose, he can chose the path of destruction or the path of prosperity and he has to make the choice soon. He signed a document agreeing to complete denuclearization. He has to show concreate evidence that he complies with the agreement. Like Trump said Kim is a smart and intelligent man and he knows history of strong men. I don't think he will chose the path of destruction of him, his family, regime and country. Trump's "my touch, my feel" might have given further incentive to Kim to chose the path of prosperity.
It's a success for Trump, all right. And for the DPRK and China--not for this country, South Korea, Japan, our future, but for them, sure.
Probably for Putin, too, come to think of it.
1
Kim isn't in a corner. Trump has already given up on joint exercises and NK is already claiming that sanctions are going away.
They are. And if Trump finally figures out that he has been rolled, it will be too late. China is already talking about weakening sanction on NK. So whose going to back any attempt by Trump to reintroduce the sanctions that are rapidly disappearing? Canada? China? Russia? the EU?
NK has a leader who is evil. But he is smarter than Trump. He won, we defaulted and lost. That's not going to change for a very long time indeed.
1
It concerns me that Trump is mostly concerned with PR. He got his photo op, coverage by reporters & photographers from all over the world and a signed document enabling hiim to claim "winning". He has neither the attention span nor the interest to concern himself with details. I suspect he feels he accomplished what he wanted, good PR. Nothing else matters to him.
6
Not the Nobel Peace Prize, it's the Screen Actors Guild Award.
If you follow all of the trump 'deals' you see a pattern.
trump sucks all the air off the stage with his bullying blustering buffoonery and after making either grandiose or empty promises (healthcare, DACA, wall, trade, G7, etc) he walks away expecting his "employees" to scotch tape together a "deal."
trump got his moment in the bright lights, camera flash, hearing his name said lovingly and talked tough for his base so he sounds like he's commander. but trump is not about hard work.
It'll be Mike's fault if he can't scotch-tape together a set of negotiations with North Korea that lead to disarmament.
All that fire and fury talk were cover so trump could deliver on Putin's desire to halt US military exercises and estrange the US from the G7.
Putin's game is spot on!
7
Mr. Stephens--by George, I think you've got it!
2
Whatever grand strategy Trump has is probably being manipulated by his advisors (Pompeo and Bolton). He may want to appear as a deal maker and do something Obama never did, but they know full well that Pyongyang is not going to abide by any agreement. It will give them cover for military action which is what they always wanted. Trump is probably too stupid to realize it.
4
" A photo op with a sinister glutton and his North Korean counterpart?"
Yup. All the world is a stage for DJT, starring the intuitive," I'll size him (Kim) up within the first minute" DJT.
"Something" did happen here and "Scientifically" speaking, our president was played.
This egotistical buffoon of a president continues to be a danger on a global scale.
6
The Gipper versus the Gutter. All one has to look at is 'what Putin wants to be done' and trump does it. PERIOD.
"Trump derangement" - yup! That's the essence of the trump-cult. After dis-inviting the Eagles football players, he invites Kim to the White House.
The Kim model of governance suits trump very nicely and he is already replicating it here in America - "reforming" our institutions in his image down to caged human-beings. State terror, who else but trump enjoys saying "Fire and Fury" and "total destruction" more? Besides, Barron trump will inherit the "presidency" or chairmanship after Dad, with the blessings of the Republican Duma.
Just as "W" claims he was able to get a sense of his soul looking into his eyes, trump and Kim recognize kinship in each other.
Moon should be a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, nothing would delegitimize that prize more than awarding it to the newest thug on the world stage.
“My touch, my feel.” eew!
"shake the hand of peace" eew!
Like magic there's "no longer a nuclear threat." We can all relax now, NOT.
At what point does this "sinister glutton and his North Korean counterpart" get the comeuppance they so truly deserve?
3
The level of rage here at a successful peace negotiation is nothing short of astonishing. It's no wonder DeNiro was reduced to yelling profanities at an awards show: the Left has become a tyrannical, screaming, incoherent mob of bullies.
Shame on you!
1
Donald Trump is the anti-Truman, anti-Eisenhower, anti-Nixon, etc. Trump should resign now. He is a disgrace to America as well as a spoiled brat. There is no need to pick fights with Canada, France, Germany, and Britain and then meet with that North Korean thug. For Trump: impeachment today, impeachment tomorrow, impeachment forever.
7
Trump could walk on water; feed the starving in N Korea with 7 loaves and fishes, and raise a Kennedy from the dead, and you would still find something to bellyache.
1
Did you really just try to compare Trump to Jesus? The two couldn’t be more distant, my friend.
2
Lets not compare Trump with any other American politician. He's in his own class; a classless, bigoted, evil man who is literally destroying everything that America stood for; an imbecile and despot who cares for nothing else but his own aggrandizing!
10
Makes no mistake, the winner of round one is Kim Jong-un. Stay tune for round two.
4
Soccer World Cup begins tomorrow in Russia, in the warm up game in Singapore
N.Korea 2 USA 0
3
The diminutive despot duped our deranged dotard decisively.
11
"Trump is a sucker. Kim is not."
Well said. That sums it up.
7
Taking the long view, Reagan and Thatcher were the beginning of the end, as they promoted the view that greed is good and society owes nothing to "losers".
Unfortunately, those "losers" include the majority of the population and the planet, and we're in deep trouble now, day by day, in every way.
Increasing wealth at the top and disempowering knowledge brings out the dangers of the original sin of Genesis.
We, earth's apex predator, are soiling our hospitable planet, and the planet's consequences are abuilding. If we don't pay attention, that's on us.
And no, we are not all getting rich: only the few and the privileged are getting rich. And wealth will not solve the problems as we loot and despoil our hospitable home.
The rich can build walls until the cows come home: surely Harvey and Maria show us that there are consequences which eventually trickle up to the predator class.
6
Sorry, forgot my reference to Genesis is about "dominion"
Should be stewardship, not using up and wasting and poisoning ...
2
The hopeful comparison to Reagan is delusional. Kim ate his lunch, got everything he wanted, gave up nothing. There is no silver lining to Trump's incompetence. He is simply unfit, probably unfit to manage a Taco Bell. He is dividing America into 2 camps: Resistance and fools.
13
Two summits; two disasters. Personally, I believe all of this is motivated by a Trump base which daily displays ignorance, detachment from reality and support for a position of which promises a marked separation from successful past practices, procedures and policies. Indeed, did Trump himself not say, “What have you got to lose?” Well, for those having nothing, both materially and mentally (you can throw in bigotry as well), it’s an easy sell. For others, having much to lose and recognizing the paths of disinformation, disorientation and corruption of the rule of law, it promises a bleak future, one that we cannot, and must not accept.
8
Giving Reagan credit for Gorbachev’s decisions grounded in his common upbringing and aspirations for his country is like giving the North Korean dictator credit for Trump’s decisions grounded in his privileged upbringing and aspirations for himself. The changes - constructive or destructive - wrought by Gorbachev and now Trump are of their own doing; others are bit players on their world stage.
1
And incredibly more than half of Republican voters think DT is a genius and a really, really smart person.
6
In the clearest of ways: Trump got Chumped.
He threw away good connections with our allies and made kissy kissy with the worst of Dictators engaged in Self-Ruling a small Nation who thinks he is God's Own Son, gave away the very things that have kept the North in check so far and got Nothing in exchange for it other than an empty promise of working towards "Complete Denulcearisation" which Kim means for EVERYONE to give up their Nukes, nut just him, and so he will hold on to His for as long as everyone else does.
Trump came away with nothing other than some pretty pictures of a signed, very short document with NO Specifics, NO Verification (Trust but Verify) but leaves us sitting on the sidelines where it comes to readiness actions and training with our South Korean Allies.
Trump gave away the farm and took an armload of veggies home as a prize. His own veggies back, how nice for him.
But what did he actually just do to us as a Nation?
5
Right on the money! You got it to a T. Trump both likes to surround himself with sycophants and to behave like one in the company of men he suspects might be more ruthless than he. The baby-man has daddy issues.
3
This summit did nothing but offer a photo-op for Trump and throw South Korea under the bus. Give up military preparedness which the North was afraid of for another promise that will never be kept. Kim is simply NEVER going to give up his nukes. They are the very thing that got him to the summit. It's not clear to me what part of that the Republicans and Trump supporters don't understand.
Historic Summit. What a joke. When Obama said he'd talk to our adversaries the Republican's heads exploded. Trump actually does it, gets nothing in return and the Republicans and Fox News blindly applaud what they once were so critical of that they claimed Obama was humiliating the nation.
It's astonishing to me how stupid and uninformed this country is. From healthcare to immigration and attacks on the judiciary and free press, Donald Trump causes so much damage and Republicans and Trump supporters including the evangelicals applaud the insanity.
They just won't understand the destruction until it impacts them. Of course it will then be too late since the damage will be done.
I'll never understand how a billionaire New Yorker who lies outright and is so ignorant he thinks Canada burned down the White House is such a wonderful president.
Republicans are spineless and Trump supporters are beyond stupid.
4
Wait a second. Didn't Kim come crawling back on hands and knees, begging Trump to reinstate the summit planning? That's what I read. And didn't our POTUS invent the art of the deal? That's what 43% of our fellow citizens take as an article of faith. So, clearly, this slobbering photo-op platitude-fest was simply Pres. Trump setting Kim up for the coup-de-grace. I'm sure of it. 40+% of Americans are sure of it. Stockholm, here he comes!!
4
He thinks he is finally getting his Emmy!
1
Corr: In Diplomacy, Trump is the Elmer Fudd.
Egotistical, obtuse, easily manipulated.
Stroke his ego and be rewarded with prestige, concessions and photo ops!
6
Nice try, but this attempt at persuasion doesn't cut the mustard. Reagan and Trump will be remembered for their huge deficits, not for their Hollywood staging and antics.
7
What Mr. Stephens fails to understand is that this was never about accomplishing anything for the "We." It has always been focused on the "Me" -- Donald J. Trump and his precious ratings. "...our history of geopolitical sobriety and our reliance on common sense" are not attached to Trump. He is worried only about HIS history. The Trump presidency operates in the sphere of "I. Me. Mine."
"For now, however, it’s hard to see what the Singapore summit has achieved other than to betray America’s allies, our belief in human rights, our history of geopolitical sobriety and our reliance on common sense. For what? A photo op with a sinister glutton and his North Korean counterpart?"
4
I don't know about diplomacy. So far, Trump gets an A+ for smashing things, but even then only when he can act unilaterally. We haven't seen any evidence yet that he can negotiate or build anything. All these other countries have to do is drag their feet for a couple of years and Trump will only be remembered as being the biggest wrecking ball to ever occupy the White House.
4
"W" looked into Putin's soul and liked what he saw. Trump went by feel and gut reaction. One went to war with Iraq for no valid reason and the other went to lunch with a murderer and gave him the blue plate special. How did we get such dumb people in charge of our country?
8
This is US!
1
I certainly share your optimism for a deal Mr. Stephens, however unlikely that deal may seem. The two lunatic Dear Leaders, both of whom have fooled their credulous base of supporters, truly deserve each other. The USA will also need more friends now that most Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans detest Trump and his willfully ignorant and obtuse supporters.
1
Funny how the past is romanticized; do you forget the massive anti Reagan protests? When _____[fill in the blank] is elected in 10 years you will fondly recall Trump’s personal touch.
2
Trump is not the Anti-Reagan, he's the Anti-Reason. Cheered on by a phalanx of morally dead, intellectually comatose, hysterically frightened, outrageously angry sycophants.
I don't recognize this country.
7
Bret, please look at the NYT (D) articles from Reagan/Gorbachev era. Fake Journalists were just as dismissive of Reagan as they are of Trump. Group-Think and Elitism the main credo of modern journalism.
3
A person who knows he is not trustworthy, trusts no one.
3
"...inner pragmatism and visionary imagination."?
And this is supposed to describe Ronald Reagan? The guy who went around the country, at the behest of GE, insisting that Medicare would be the end of the free world and who thought he himself liberated concentration groups, because it happened in a movie?
For a "conservative" who claims to be pitilessly clear-sighted and free of feel-good liberal Hollywood fantasy, Bret Stephens sure manages to come up with the whoppers week after week.
2
It is baffling to suggest Reagan was successful in his negotiations with Gorbachev. Is Russia's behavior today really any more preferable than that of the former Soviet Union? If I'm not mistaken, the Soviet KGB chief took over and Russia now has a corrupt government of oligarchs that eerily resembles the one that led to formation of the Soviet Union in the first place. And we still have nuclear weapons pointed at one another ready for launch. Reagan was simply another conservative fool with little sense of reality. And now Trump's arrogance and stupidity presents what may be the greatest threat to our nation since the Cuban missile Crisis.
8
Sixth, Reagan´s allies were very active fighting their very own fight against Warsaw Pact and had cooperated deliberately by contributing all their powers and effectiveness to the alliance. Trump - does he still have some allies somewhere except Saudi Arabia, Israel and some others? Is he interested to have some in his concept of "America First"?
Seventh, even in the 1980ties "America Alone" would never have had sufficient power to win this global struggle also even the position of US was relatively stronger than it is now. The potential of allies had been crucial and this potential was joint on their own accord then and not because of striking American concepts of leadership. The fear of the Soviets was overwhelmingly much stronger. Actually military capacity of European members of NATO is weak only by the fact that it had been voluntarily reduced according to long time necessities of European theatre ("encircled by friends") no matter what US said.
Eighth, it´s not sufficient to look on US diplomacy only as you do here again. Reagan, Trump, Clinton, Obama, Bush - if there is no basic alignment of objective interests of US and their global allies. Even the best and brightest president with perfect diplomatic skills and all Nobel Prize awarded advisers can´t do this job without gathering these interests.
Ninth - Mr. Stephens, the crown for the "pun of the day" already belongs to you.
"Trump is playing geopolitical chess."
This joke can not be beaten anymore today!
1
Mr. Stephens:
Please cease your Trump Derangement Syndrome and write about something else for a change.Your Trump rantings have become trite and monotonous. We don't need any more Trump noise.
It is too early to say how well the Trump-Kim summit went. Let's give it a little time and see if any good comes of it.
1
"Fifth, Trump is a sucker. Kim is not."
Aside from being childishly vulgar, this statement is based on...what, exactly? Stephens' personal knowledge of both of these men? His powers of remote psychoanalysis? Pure conjecture?
Interestingly, Stephens called Trump "courageous" for pulling out of the Iran deal, and has only plaudits for notorious warmonger John McCain, who once jokingly sang "Bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Anne." I bet he thinks Netanyahu's use of a bomb cartoon before the UN was the height of sophisticated statesmanship. But who am I to question Stephens' remarkable Freudian insights into the psyches of complete strangers?
Mr. Stephens only has one cause, and it certainly isn't the United States. If only he weren't too old to fight, I'd encourage him go confront Iran himself instead of cheerleading others to do it for him. Barring that, he's welcome to send his own children. If that suggestion seems obscene, it's only a reflection of Stephens' repellent proxy bloodlust.
1
Bret, for someone who sees clearly the issues around the theory of climate change, you suffer from as bad a case of Trump derangement syndrome as we've seen here on these pages or at MSNBC. Of maybe your betters at the Times told you it was time to join the team a little more firmly and write something as idiotic as the rest put out.
This meeting was a 1st meeting. Trump got Kim to the table through a combo of diplomacy with China, military threats, sanctions and then making nice with NK. We don't know where it will end but ultimately there are differences here that might induce a Kim to denuke.
First, he's in big trouble economically. His country withers while the world blossoms. NK's economic issues won't go away as long as he is isolated.
2) Other nuclear states have a vested interest in keeping their nukes due to immediate threats -- such as Israel (if they have them); India-Pakistan. The French and Brits have them to remind them of their old glories and the remote threat of Russia. But Kim doesn't have an immediate threat, although he may try to convince the world the US is a threat, but other than as a lever he has no reason to keep them from a national security stand point.
3) He wants to remain in power and ultimately his people will want a better life, not the concept that they could blow someone up -- and then be blown up themselves.
4) He knows Trump won't sign a deal and walk away and pretend things are working out. He's in a box.
You think the North Korean people want a better life? Well anyone would want better than the misery that has persisted for generations, and yet there are zero signs of change under the present Kim. At the same time, these same people are so heavily propagandized and brainwashed that they have little concept of what a better life would be even while continuing to embrace their cult of personality with alacrity. Not one word uttered by Trump nor any action in this "big show" has changed this equation in the slightest.
Chuck you sound like one of them thar progs that would rather Trump fail than do good for the country. The likelihood is, if your Kim, that you figure that the people of NK may be figuring out that there are better ways to live.
Trump gave up a lot.
Kim gave up a lot.
Then we have Neville Chamberlain...Peace!
1
Trump is not as complex as an "Anti-Reagan". He's a used car salesman masquerading as a politician.
6
Trump is interested in nothing but headlines including the name Trump. He will do anything, say anything, agree or disagree with anything to make that happen. It is his sole raison d'être.
3
Bret Stephens knows much; after all he writes for New York Times. But when he states the Cold War over there seems to be a disconnect. Cold War has returned with a vengeance with Russian diplomats expelled and Russian embassy compounds confiscated. UN debates with US ambassador very undiplomatic to the extreme.
History: Russia assured no US forces deployed in Eastern Europe after 1999 agreements made with George H Bush. No such luck. As respects Crimea the Russians were not prepared to surrender that strategic enclave to anti-Russian Kiev. Agreed Russia helped Eastern (Russian) Ukrainians but did they have any choice? The allegation Trump beholden to Putin based on some very sleazy stories about Trump with nothing proven yet. The Russian leader succeeded in Syria by defending the Assad government against Islamic State Sunni terrorism. Trump gets his wires crossed sometimes; more like REAGAN with a bad memory: Princess David? Somebody should tell Trump even American leaders need good friends. Score so far: Russia has only got one friend: China.
Read the last line of this one, carefully.
2
He only believes in " My Opportunity". In North Korea he see a way for $$$$ at the Trump organization. If he can make friends with Kim and make $$$ then all is good. The rest is irrelevant.
Reagan is good to use for comparisons but let's stay in 2018. This vaunted meeting is basically little more that a political rally and a very poor one at that.
If the key subject is denuclearization, it has slipped into the background and remains only as a fleeting desire. Worse, future meeting are the only chance Trump has to make of this farce, a meaningful occurrence.
This has been a wonderful photo shoot and little else.
3
China is The Blob......that amorphous horror movie monster that absorbs everything it comes in contact with. As every Korean War Vet knows.....we fought China in North Korea.....not North Korea. North Korea was the afterthought, once we stabilized at the 38th Parallel, which exists as a trip wire to a War that has never actually ended.......Trump didnt negotiate with North Korea or Kim JungUn.......he is negotiating with CHINA. The USA is fighting for its existence......struggling to avoid being absorbed by the Blob. Prudent Isolation is necessary. Most of the developments are beyond one man's control, certainly Trump recognizes that he's not actually driving current events, only riding the wave.......even if the Media writes every story as if Trump is the main character.........I notice that the NYT offered nary a peep about the SCO meeting in China that took place at exactly the same time as this KimJungUn meeting and the G7 meeting.......Oh, whats the SCO? its Shanghai Cooperation Organization.....a meeting of all the Chinese aligned nations of the world.......Here comes the Blob.
Then again, if the venal and duplicitous Clintons were in the White House, they’d be insulting allies by shaking them down for contributions to the Clinton Foundation. [Appalling election, huh. Let’s try to do better in 2020, shall we?]
We forbid Trump dating Putin, so now he's going steady with Kim.
4
At this juncture I am not concerned about anything that happens - substantively - on the Korean Peninsula. War now seems unlikely. The status quo appears to be the plan for the indefinite future. North Korea may have gained face, but their economic and political structures will not turn them into a serious peace-time power for an extended period of time. Resolving the stalemate would be good for the U.S., Korea, and Japan... though to be honest, the status quo might also be considered good as it keeps a strong, legitimate U.S. presence in China's back yard.
Basically, on substance I am not troubled if the President wins, loses or draws at a deal in North Korea.
What is troubling is that our President certainly appears to be losing at every negotiation table he sits down at. NAFTA, G-7, the Trans-Pacific, North Korea, Iran, Israel/Palestine. He talks tough, acts tough, wheels and deals... and walks away with nothing for Americans other than discord and angry allies (sans Israel, of course, and now at least we have assurances of peace in N.K.). I keep holding out hope that I am missing something, that the economic geniuses in the conservative think tanks will pull a rabbit out the hat.
I haven't seen it yet, and I doubt I will.
I'll take whatever comes out of North Korea at this point, because the "whatever" no longer seems to involve conflict. But I will also chalk this up to yet another example of our President's inept brand of international negotiations.
5
Xi is the grandmaster here, giving Trump a high profile but zero impact win pre midterms. Nothing has ever deminished US foreign power and corroded its domestic institutions as effectively as Trump.
2
What amazes and depresses me is the extent to which the chattering classes have accepted the Trump version of American government. Great, a comparison between two septuagenarians on negotiating style, plus the usual observations about Kim suckering Trump, with the usual careful caveat in the post flip-flop days of I need to leave the door open so I'll never be proven wrong.
But only one comparison here should be the topic of discussion: The difference between, "Trust, but verify," and, "My touch, my feel."
The first is a policy statement, that is aimed, regardless of how we feel about Reagan's beliefs and governing style, at holding the best interests of the nation as paramount.
The second is a statement in the genre of, "L'etat, c'est moi." It holds that whatever Trump feels like doing, that will be the nation's policy and best interest.
Trump lashed out at the nation of Canada because he didn't like the way Justin Trudeau talked about Donald Trump. It had nothing to do with the alliance, the best interests of the country, or anything other than that Trump felt he had received less than sufficient praise.
In that sense, perhaps Kim and Trump are more alike than Mr. Stephens admits. The actions of Donald Trump at the G-7, and the statement that he does what he feels, are the actions of a dictator, not the president of a democracy.
It is more than depressing that none of the talking heads and chatterers in the news media can feel that change anymore.
6
No way is Trump playing geopolitical chess at a level plodding pundits can scarcely conceive.
Trump is negotiating from personal ego and other similarly self-centered motives.
Flying by the seat of his pants, he accepted a precarious, unsupervised meeting with Kim without a U.S. note-taker present.
Trump believes everything is easy and it's all about the optics. But foreign policy isn't show business. He complimented Kim like he would a contestant at his beauty pageant. This also illustrates Trump's constant admiration for strongmen and dictators.
5
President Reagan barely raised his sights to the over-simplified pieties that qualified for Republican awareness of what was going on in other countries. It was hard to imagine then that a dimmer mind and a more disconnected relationship with reality would loom large in a presidency to follow in less than one generation. Reagan may have been untroubled by the plight of exploited workers, struggling immigrants, and enviromental degradation, but he did not go out of his way to intimidate those who supported their cause. Though Reagan saw the Soviet Union as a one-dimensional evil force, he had the capacity to try to understand some of the ways they viewed the rest of the world. Trump's little world is entirely transactional, win or lose, bully or be bullied; the characteristics of a sociopath.
2
Pre-School Redux. It's ridiculous to think that Trump follows any strategy more complex than gaining the attention of the other bad kids at nursery school.
4
Trump is the natural successor to Reagan, not the Anti-Reagan. Good guy celebrity using bigotry and cheap platitudes to get angry entitled white guys and just enough of their wives to vote against their financial interests.
The age of Trump was predestined that day in Philadelphia, MS.
2
More superficial analysis from the usual narrow minded Media outlets.......meanwhile......out there in the real world. China roped in all its allies at the SCO conference ... held during exactly the same days as the G7 conference and the staged KimJungUn charade. China moves to create its own exclusive trading empire.....control the old time Silk Road, no longer a mythological exotic tale from yesteryear....but a modern trade route featuring super-highways, oil pipelines, air traffic routes, and high speed internet telecom routes. The G7 squabbles over tarrifs and snooty remarks about Trump. We avoided national disaster by withdrawing from TPP, which China was about to use to its unique advantage, playing the Wall Street Crowd for suckers........now Trump used KimJungUn to negotiate with China.......looks grim on the surface, but maybe we do need to withdraw from Korea, to strengthen positions in Japan or Taiwan or both......we've pretty much had to surrender the South China Sea back to China.....this threatens to cut off oil supplies to Japan and Taiwan........
There's no parallel in American history for Trump, not any really good ones in world history. Tuchman's "The March of Folly" doesn't contain any as feckless and silly as Trump.
James Buchanan was arguably the worst president in American history, through a combination of ugly beliefs (he was ardently pro-slavery), idiot bungling, and corruption. Most historians blame him for exacerbating the civil war ... though it is hard for me to see how a president in his term could have stopped it, in any way that would have left America whole, and governed under the constitution.
What we have now is a president who is personally far less decent, competent, and engaged in anything beyond self-aggrandizement than Buchanan was. That's an utterly amazing low.
The judgement of history on Mr. Trump will be very harsh, but the question of whether he will be a new worst will likely ride on calamities we have not seen yet -- will he be culpable of something worse than Buchanan's contribution to our Civil War?
3
First error Bret makes is giving credit to Reagan, while the actual credit is to Gorbachev. Second mistake, is that Reagan and Trump are actually identical in their ignorance of policy details.
Surely Bret should be able to comprehend the reason Trump is betraying our allies, because the betrayal is part of the quid pro quo with Trump's Russian conspirators. Korea is irrelevant.
PROSECUTE RUSSIAGATE!
3
Nowhere and by no one was there any intimation that Trump's meeting yesterday had Glasnost as it desired result. Just as there was no such agenda when Nixon made his overture to China. The goal here is simply denuclearization and a more peaceful road ahead. Yet anyone not so blinded and poisoned by Trumopophobia knows full well that it is steps like these that yield genuine human rights benefits ; that there is a positive domino effect. Here we are barely a quarter century after Tianemen Square and look at China compared to what was then. Shame on Brett Stephens and shame on the NY Times for your relentless gang-up against the President. History is being made and the grey lady is being left behind, way way behind.
First they said Trump was just being a bad boy with locker room talk and he'd reform when he got into office. Then they said he'd surround himself with sober minded people who would rein him in. Now you say that there might be some hidden grand strategy in his madness. NO. Trump is evil; he doesn't know what he's doing and doesn't care. He will push all the buttons, take all the liberties he can until he is stopped. While he's doing this he has made wreckage of the once proud GOP which will pay for his tantrums for many years after he leaves the White House.
2
you are assuming he has no intention to verify. Perhaps the writer doesn't understand deal making.
Perhaps the author who celebrated Obama's "Peace Prize" before accomplishing anything, may wish to give peace a chance even if its a Trump deal?
1
Read up on the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), a form of psychosis, and understand his every utterance and action, and know clearly where we're headed collectively. Spoiler alert, it ain't pretty.
2
Reagan understood his limitations in seeking peaceful resolutions and history shows he was rewarded for his efforts. Trump, lacking self awareness, sought world gratification and left Singapore with nothing but a photo-op, an unverifiable memo and credit for legitimizing the world's most ruthless dictator.
2
"Any publicity is good publicity" - Anna Nicole Smith
1
..it's not such a big deal Bret....so we discontinue military exercises in S. Korea - we shouldn't even be on the Peninsula in the first place. It's not our region - it's China's and Russia's. If anyone cares about stability between the Koreas, it's the two communist neighbors bordering Kim Jong un. N. Korea gets most of its funding from China - which includes military operations. Kim Jong un doesn't go the bathroom without first getting approval from Beijing. China controls Rocket Man - he's on a leash, long enough to rile the US, but don't think he's got his finger on any triggers - Mr Xi would cut off his hand first. China wants no incidents on the Peninsula...none - especially a nuclear event. All this diplomacy is nonsense. We'll see if anything material results from it; if it does, it's because China wants it to.
1
Trump is probably getting duped. In my opinion, he is getting duped. Stephens' timescale argument is the best explanation for why Trump risks abject failure. Trump is impatient and impulsive. Time is on Kim's side. If Kim can restrain his own worst tendencies, the victory will belong to North Korea. Trump will always concede more than he should in the interest of expedience. Like most things in Trump's life, the consequences will be borne by someone other than himself.
That said, I think this opinion overlooks the central thesis of The Atlantic article. Peter Beinart isn't saying Trump is like Reagan. Beinart isn't even saying Trump is a good negotiator. I think we can all agree Trump is not a good negotiator. The basis for Beinart's comparison is that we need to fundamentally rethink our relationship with North Korea in order to establish a lasting peace. My favorite line reads:
"...improving relations with North Korea is a moral imperative. The academic evidence is clear: Economic integration is a far better instrument for democratic change than are economic sanctions."
I think what Mr. Beinart is saying is "you catch more bees with honey than vinegar." That's how we accidentally ended the Cold War decades ahead of schedule. Maybe it can work with North Korea too. The person who deserves the peace prize though is Mr. Moon. Trump insulting every ally is certainly not helping. You can throw Iran into the same basket. Peace will come despite Trump, not because of him.
1
Donald J. Trump is a reality tv so-called POTUS.
He knows nothing, and cares about nothing except himself.
When he was on The Apprentice, he was a loose cannon, and the producers had to cut and paste sections to make a show that seemed real, when it was really utter nonsense.
He is doing the same thing now, playing the bully, who is riding for a huge fall. The problem is that we are passengers on that bus, and when he crashes, we are going to be unwilling participants.
3
Amen, Brett.
“My touch, my feel.” - the parallels to W seeing Putin’s soul are irresistible.
But seriously did Saint Reagan ever surrender America’s position as leader of the free world?
2
No doubt Trump believes this is "peace for our time."
Heavan help us all.
2
Oh, that last line. And yet none of Trump’s obscenities are sufficient to move a Republican Congress to contain him. Their cowardice, hypocrisy and self interest are as much a threat to the Republic as anything Trump has done. As for the rest of us, we are easily bought off by a few dollars and a cheap vaudeville show in the White House. This too shall pass but recovery, if it ever comes, will be long and arduous.
5
We still have to put up with these Republican painted holy pictures of St. Reagan. Sorry, Trump is the true image of Ronald Reagan’s greed-is-good, racist presidency, a veritable picture of Dorian Gray. Trump is where the Reagan Revolution has taken us.
5
I might add that Saint Ronnie was also homophobic.
Mr. Stephens, this article perfectly articulates and rebuffs populist FOX News et al's loving comparison between Reagan and Trump. I don't always agree with your opinions but this one is a dead on bulls eye.
Trump could care less about Human Rights. He only cares that he holds the world in sway. I do not think you are wrong in your assessment of Trump or Kim.
Drama is Trump's preferred method of dealing with any situation.
Hence his use of language like "bigly", "We will be winning so much that we will get tired of winning", "Witch Hunt" "the most attendees at my Inauguration ever".
His hyperbole is legendary. His actions are legendary. Like tearing up the Paris Accord, continual insulting of our allies, and his lies, lies, lies.
Trump has been allowed to insult our intelligence. He is an embarrassment as a President
I honestly fail to see how Americans, the press or the rest of the world can be stunned any more.
Trump is the biggest threat to our Democracy, not our enemies.
The only thing that Trump sees in going to North Korea is a business opportunity for himself.
It is all about Trump, not our country.
3
Trump doesn't care about bad deals. He lives for bankruptcy, he wins in bankruptcy. Oh the drama. The whole administration is filled with drama queens and soap opera writers.
3
How does an emperor with no clothes get pantsed? Mr. Trump somehow managed this feat in Singapore.
2
Bret - I object to the deification of Saint Ronnie - he and Nixon started us on the moral slide that has enabled this carnival barker to occupy the WHITEhouse.
4
Reagan's "peace with the Soviet Union" created Putin's Russia.
A few months ago nuclear warheads were flying over Japan. Guam and South Korea were very nervous. Surely, Trump must be doing something right.Be fair.
1
With visions of resort hotels and international trade, Mr. Trump wants to seduce Mr. Kim into entering the world economy . That's mistaken. Those are Mr. Kim's worst nightmares. Those things would open North Korea to the world. Mr. Kim's dictatorship depends on his society being closed. He needs control over the country's media, its travel, its commerce, its education. And he currently has this control, and the weaponry to protect it and keep others out. What he lacks is cash. He'll do what he needs to do to get some cash. But he won't give up his bread and butter--a closed society protected by a potent military force. I doubt he will give up any more than Iran did. Showing him the advantages of capitalism and democracy is laughable.
1
Contiuing to maintain that Reagan was responsible for the end of the Cold War is a myth that Repblicans have been riding on for almost three days.
Reagan was not partciularly accomplished in any area. He went through the motions about "the evil empire' and the Soviet Union meanwhile was already for quite a while imploding from within.
Reagan was not intelligent enough to have done what is so often popularily attributed to him. If you believe the myth, you are either willing to settle for mediocrity or yourself are missing in critical faculties.
2
You are correct - the fall of the Soviet Empire had to do with the decline in oil prices. They could no longer afford to support all of the satellite soviet states and had no choice but to dissemble.
1
Typo: Three years.
Trump gets drama, and that's what this was. His supporters will love it because it's what the eggheads told him not to do, just like they love the tariffs that are more likely to hurt them than help them. It's a simple solution. I go talk to Kim Jung Un, problem solved. I stick it to the allies and slap tariffs on them, problem solved. It's dramatic, it flies in the face of what the eggheads say, they'll love it. It does not matter that it's ineffectual, or even counterproductive. The only thing that matters is that it's not what you, and people like you would have done. That's pretty much the point of everything Trump does. He knows what sounds good to his supporters, and so he does something that looks like that thing. The real world consequences are simply not relevant. It's all about the love. He can feel the love. As long as he feels the love, he'll do exactly the same sorts of things. It's a freakshow, and it's a waste of time to try to analyze his actions with respect to some sort of grand strategy.
Just feel the love man, feel the love.
1
One is reminded of W who "saw Putin's soul"
5
The Anti-Reagan? Why not the Anti-Obama? 8 months ago DJT was ready to turn Earth into a nuclear waste land. Now, he agrees to stop joint military exercises in return for North Korean promises to de-nuke. Trump loses. Ha ha ha.
.
Except, those exercises can be turned on again, very quickly. Now, if DJT sends a few cargo planes loaded with cash, to North Korea, then I will say he failed. And, if there are no cargo planes, then DJT is the Anti-Obama.
For the millionth time, unfrozen bank accounts are not "cargo planes loaded with cash" in the Real World.
1
If I understand the Democratic Party and the blindly supportive liberal community correctly, they want North Korea and Kim Jong Un to sheepishly declare self the utter fools, praise the Obama Administration and denounce Mr. Trump, resign immediately from the power for not adhering to the progressive agenda, and hand over their nuclear weapons in order for the peace treaty to be signed.
If anybody wonders how the left lost the last elections to the complete outsider and political beginner called Donald J. Trump, there you go…
There is more…
The left wants to keep ignoring and antagonizing Russia over the next 65 years, or till Moscow confess that they were so wrong and foolish, whatever comes first…
Then they will sit down and try to solve the problems.
That’s the only explanation how come that we haven’t signed the peace treaty with Pyongyang since 1953.
Or, we could continue playing the blame game and point a finger at the GOP for failing to accomplish the same objective…
Dictator in training! He has done nothing that wasn't done before and with less to show for it.
1
History will be the judge of this so-called "historic summit," but the current generations must live through the immediate consequences of a dangerously unstable leader accuses one of the US' oldest allies of backstabbing them and then promptly makes grandiose overtures to a dictator noted for his brutality. Trump speaks Putin's praises and bashes Europe and western allies. The GOP shows utter gutlessness and cowardice by refusing to vocally and ardently stand up to this man. They have nothing to lose to defend the gains enshrined by Presidents Eisenhower to Reagan and Bush Senior.
They have nothing left to lose because Trump is giving everything away.
Trump's brazen two-facedness and gutting the State Department will have grave impacts on American diplomacy and esteem abroad for decades after he leaves office. But go ahead, live for the next news cycle, the 2018 midterms. Reap what you sow.
1
Ha, well, if anybody knows 'touch and feel', it's our President, Donald. Why, he's been training for this gig his whole adult life!
5
I own that many among the illiterati or Illuminati will deem this “misguided” or “uninformed”:
Trump’s junket to Singapore is a nothing burger trumped up as a triple-decker oozing special sauce and fake cheese, served not just for those who understand nourishment as gratification but also for those who obsess over his insatiable need to be noticed.
Nothing about this spells anything more clearly than Trump owning what he or quite likely anyone else never intended to pay for.
But rest assured it will not go away and will push aside anything of worth, and the devil get the hindmost.
1
The ironic benefit to the bumbling, but brilliant stagecraft, is that at least for know Trump himself is working towards peace. It was Trump not Kim who was the biggest threat to a war, especially with Senators like Graham selling the "war option" to deter N. Korea's nuclear buildup. Moon of S. Korea whose nation was in the crosshairs of the Trump/Kim bombast enabled the summit with his diplomacy. Kim was never going to start a war. He wants nukes for leverage and defense...to get to the table with the big power, something he has now accomplished. Trump is fixated on a "win" and has no idea about the details or nuances. Right now that's good. His gun is back in the holster. For now.
1
Two of earth's most disgusting and sinister "leaders" since the dark days of the 1930s have sat down at their unholy shabbat. What was accomplished? Nothing substantive. For all we know, Trump may simply decide to implement many of Kim's despotic methods of social control. At any time the screaming of a nuclear-tipped ICBM may be heard across the sky, no matter what bromides were dispensed from this unholy meeting of two sick minds.
2
Trump ain't Reagan, but he is the leader of your party, Bret, so get on board and quit griping or totally reject your party.
1
I wish you wouldn't call him "the donald." I mean, please, there's nothing warm and fuzzy about this would-be dictator.
Trump boasted that he didn't need to do any homework for the summit conference. Neither did Kim, though he had the sense not to boast about it.
The North Koreans surely understood what even casual observers understood on hearing three months ago that Trump had agreed to a direct meeting and wasn't going to wait for adequate spadework to be done first. It was obvious that he meant to go through the motions of making a deal and then declare it a great one, regardless. After all, that's the way he lives his life.
Kim only needed to play along and pick up any free concessions to be had besides the guaranteed prize of recognition as the leader of a nuclear power and a peer of the President of the United States.
All the world knows that Donald Trump substitutes boasts and predictions for accomplishments. It doesn't take a Machiavelli to realize that once Trump has been drawn into boasting of an epoch-making deal and predicting results that will flow from it, he can be made to trot along behind his opponent offering inducements to produce some semblance of those results.
This man who heaped scorn on his predecessors for being cheated by North Korea now justifies his clumsy deal with Kim in the words "I trust him" and "I believe him." Well, farce does beat tragedy, if we can scrape through without getting both.
4
Mr Pickens also said:
"I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure. "
Trump's unpredictability is the most predictable thing about him and it springs not from cleverness but from a personality disorder. If you were Kim , would you stake your regime on Trump? At the very least what has passed as unpredictability in international relations in the past was well thought out in advance. Trump's habitual (predictable)shooting from the hip must have been taken into account by Kim as well as Trump's predictable neediness to be admired.
3
I am 71 and have seen many changes in my life. Most of them, the good and the bad, came from careful consideration and were molded by perspective and advice from experts. To trust this "touchy-feely" moment from Trump, who somehow from touching Kim's elbow is dead sure that peace is just over the threshold takes one back to believing in fairies.
6
There are no guarantees, and progress if made is incremental. But there is no progress at all if there is never a start. Thump made a start. Between the meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev to the present, there hasn't been a president who even moved towards the starting line with North Korea until Trump. What would we think of a document signed by Kim that promised all nukes and nukes etc. would be out in one year. Would that constitute a guarantee? I've lived long enough to know that whatever is on that document is no more than ink on a piece of paper. But NK has a lot to gain. The sanction removed, they will have the opportunity to expand their trade. They will also be less dependent on China and Russia. Regardless of how many nukes he throws at us, he also understands that he would be no more than a nuclear shadow on the ground, once we launch ours. Some are upset because Trump didn’t attack Kim with a series of lectures on human rights. But Trump was trying to remove the threat that hundreds of million people will lose their right to live within 30 minutes after the buttons are pushed. So, we have left the starting line and for me that brings hope even without ink on paper guarantees.
1
Trump seems to think he's jumped over all the sharks to the finish line. There is an order of process to end wars. The Korean War is in a state of armistice, which means locked and loaded and ready to go when the balloon goes up again.
If he thought that he would give us specifics Kim has agreed to signed in ink on a piece of paper which is also worthless because it has ink on it.
No, I don't think so. He didn't give specifics. One of the results of this conversation is a treaty signed to end the Korean war. That has been discussed and that process started when Kim stepped over the divide and walked into South Korea.
Trump wants to suggest that he's working NK through touch and feel. It's really just euphemistically suggesting that he doesn't want to do any real work. So what else is new?
11
We're probably supposed to believe that Trump and Kim did a Vulcan mind-meld during the interval they were together alone.
1
It is so hard to explain anything to the people that don’t want to learn, change or improve…
Why do the people act in such a strange way?
They embrace some religion that they follow blindly and unconditionally.
The problem is that those people wrongly believe that a religion is exclusively associated with a clergy and the churches.
A religion is just a way of thinking.
Even the atheists can be very religious people if they have dogmatic and rigid system of values based upon bias and prejudice…
A religion is very adaptive system, something like chameleon. Sometimes it disguises self into a political party or anything else.
All the religions have in common the following: a blind obedience and support by the folks, without any doubt, and the worldviews unsubstantiated by the facts and reality.
Thus it’s very hard to recognize any difference between the monotheistic religions and the political parties any longer.
That’s why they march together hand-in-hand into the endless wars across all the continents.
They have the advertising set of principles that is very noble and the practical implementation directly opposite to the declared values…
The expression "establishment of religion" does mean "faith-based belief". That makes the first amendment a King Arthur's sword to cut a Gordian knot.
An optimistic take on Barack Obama’s and John Kerry’s historic “deal” with Iran’s leaders, agreed to on 2 April 2015, is that it’s Munich Redux, an agreement dated 29 Sept. 1938 and signed, among other parties, by Britain’s PM Neville Chamberlain, who undertook to believe that Adolf Hitler was a nice guy who had NO intentions to conquer ze vorld. We’ll get FAR better deals from Trump.
And Ronald Reagan, lest some of us forget even among the illuinati, hasn’t been president since 20 Jan. 1989 and has been dead since 5 June 2004. The president we have at present is Donald Trump, and he resembles the Gipper in no way – thank heaven: the times in which we live are not susceptible to Reaganesque solutions, and there aren’t any Gorbachevs out there anymore. But today’s challenges could be susceptible to Trumpian solutions. We’ll see.
Beinart is wrong about a lot of things, but for the purposes of Bret’s column he’s most wrong at present that Trump believes that it’s “all about the political relationship”. There IS no “political relationship” with Kim Jong-un, who was dealt a pretty weak historical hand with which to bluff for a few onions to feed his starving people. Trump merely glad-hands people willing to negotiate with him over things they have that he wants … until they stop playing ball.
And Bret mistakes trade and subsidy disagreements with allies for an unwillingness to work with allies generally.
Trump is seeking to redefine a 70-plus-year-old Western alliance to be a FAR more participatory one in which allies pull their weight more in line with their populations and their wealth, PAY for more themselves, and in the end make that alliance stronger and more sustainable. That threatens economic interests, there will be the tearing of hair and consumption of many antacids before the sausage is made and we HAVE that re-architected alliance. But that doesn’t mean we don’t work together in the meantime to address common threats.
He may be where he wants to be, at the center of a world’s astonished attention, but Bill Clinton would have been comfortable with those precise coordinates in space-time, as well. That desire is hardly NON-presidential. The difference is that Trump doesn’t NEED to bomb factories in North Korea to distract from a Monica Lewinsky scandal – and we’re probably a few months from one of the most anticlimactic statements ever issued by a prosecutor in history: “there is insufficient credible evidence to pursue this investigation on Russian cahooting against the president.” Someone keep the smelling salts handy for Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
The Singapore Summit betrayed nobody on our side, gave to Kim nothing of any value, and represented only the first step in what probably will be a long road to a marginally more stable world. But it was Trump who put us on that road.
Talk about reading some tea leaves. Trump does indeed need some distraction from his woes.
I would say South Korea might feel differently about your non-reality based oracle that Trump "gave Kime nothing of any value".
Trump brought a movie and Dennis Rodman. THAT was nothing of any value.
China is N.Korea’s lifeline. Russia, in the black market, also helps.
Trump, in his zeal for the deal, will provide economic incentives to N. Korea (“free trade with N. Korea”) to denuclearize. In some parts, this would be called nuclear blackmail.
But getting the US to subsidize N.Korea is Chinese and Russian 3 dimensional chess against Trump’s tic tac toe. And there is no way China or Russia will let N.Korea drift too far from their orbit. So for Russia, China and N.Korea, it is win, win, win.
For us it is good if we can pay N.Korea enough to give up its nukes and rockets. But let’s not think that this happens because Kim and Trump have personal chemistry. It is cold, hard cash.
We are seeing the emergence of the Trump Foreign Policy Doctrine - Trump does the exact opposite of what he tells his base. As in, “No more free rides for other countries. They are robbing us. We are subsidizing them.” And if Obama did the same thing that Trump is doing, Obama bad, Trump, good.
7
President Reagan was solid. He had capable advisors and he spoke the truth. Officials recorded the words of conferences.
Trump has no trace of facts, the truth, and goes it alone with some leaders who also do not want details of their conversation out to the Americans.
6
Reagan wasn't a great actor, but he possessed a mite of character and was passable acting as a President.
Trump is completely lacking in character and his acting as a President fools no one except people wishing to be fooled, which unfortunately is many millions of the American people.
8
Reagan was the worst president America ever had and set the stage for the ungovernable polarized society that elected Donald J. Trump. Reagan worked with Iran to delay the release of American prisoners is just one of many acts that made conspiring with the enemy sound political strategy that has made the USA a trusted enemy and a feared ally. Reagan epitomized duplicity from the time he betrayed his guild membership to the FBI to the purge of moderates in the GOP. He may have been only a B actor but he was an A#1 conman.
11
You will be proved wrong once again and we’ll hear no apology. That the beauty of being in your position, you can say whatever you want, no matter how silly, and you are never held accountable. I wish I had your job.
5
You're talking about Trump, correct?
To add to this list of problematic moves by our Dear Leader---that would be Trump---Trump will quickly forget about North Korea---but our allies will not forget Quebec. Trump, being the careless man he is, has lost the trust of our allies, who now, will begin the process of building an imaginary wall around our country.
6
I rarely agree whole heartily with Mr. Stevens but this is one of them. Trumped got "taken for a ride" and we along with him. This fool of a president doesn't even know that he has been swindled by this lying murderer Kim.
It is well past the time for panic over this administration's policies. The question now is How do reasonable people preserve what good that can be protected from this mad Republican and his sycophant followers?
6
Reagan was opposed to the “axis of evil”. This president wants to join it.
7
yes, but North Korea, according to trump, has fantastic beaches.
from http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-news-trump-korea-condos-2018061...
The former real estate tycoon said after a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he could imagine condominium developments on the hermit kingdom’s shoreline.
“They have great beaches. You see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said boy look at that, wouldn’t that make a great condo,” he said at a news conference after the summit in Singapore on Tuesday.
“And I said instead of doing that you could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that, right? It’s great.”
Really when trying to "understand" trump you need only focus on money. He's a grifter and as mentioned in the NY Times recently, a grifter gonna grift.
4
Trump is SO transparent. It’s all drama and photo opportunities. Our president asks photographers to make him look “handsome and slim.”
He calls a ruthless mass murderer who has killed members of his own family with an ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN for cryin’ out loud, honorable.
The great negotiator.... It’s easy to strike a deal when you are prepared to give away the store.
5
Telling that Stephens makes no mention of Rove's "reality based community" or of the genocide that the USA committed against North Korea. General Curtis Lemay, who coordinated the bombing campaign (1950-53): “We Killed Off – What – Twenty Percent of the Population. We Burned Down every Town in North Korea…”
2
Thus spoke an honest broker on an impossible deal...as advertised by a shyster hungry for applause and recognition, jester Donald J. Trump. Can't we see he is clueless of what it takes to be a responsible, an honest player, instead of his nasty vulgarity in attacking allies...while snuggling to Kim Jong-un? Why is Trump sending himself congratulatory flowers as if the battle was won without a single casualty but his own? Where is American standing, and credibility? When the American constitution was written, conferring ample powers to the president, they never imagined this degree of abuse, and trampling of this democracy by a most ignorant bully who doesn't read and has no interest in the truth nor objective reality. It is sickening, and highly dangerous, to watch an unscrupulous thug, devoid of feelings, thrash friends while feeling at easy with despots like himself...while the republican congress sits idle, looking the other way; dereliction of duty, to say the least; can't we at least withhold their salary?
3
Very embarrassing, sad, to see the US president star-struck by Kim Jung-un. This entire experience has been surreal in Trump's expectation that we see it as a success. I think his base may finally get a sense of unease over this one.
4
Don’t count on it.
2
His "base" would not suffer from any unease even if a North Korean missile hit them in the face. They would assume that it's the Second Coming.
2
Great PR, but a terribly weak American outcome a la Trump. Certainly not anything resembling the overblown fiction of the Art of the Deal.
Trump has been happily wowed and badly snookered while the world watches incredulous with rapt attention.
1
Trump is playing ping-pong, while reasonable, rational people are playing chess. The latter think in terms of normal strategies, what makes sense and what does not. The former plays so the audience is quickly turning their heads back and forth in unison watching the little white ball rather than looking at what is happening under the table.
Let’s not normalize Trump because we are inundated with constant, abnormal distractions. Let’s not kid ourselves by saying, “I hope I am wrong,” when day after day, Trump demonstrates we are not. Let’s not point out other political cult figures for comparison with Trump; Trump is a political cult figure. Let’s point out the virtues of all administrations with practical, rational, reasonable, bi-partisan/bi-lateral policies that worked because everyone working from the same playbook and toward the same goals of peace and prosperity at home and abroad. Pay attention because Trump is not working toward these goals.
We are living through a perfect storm of an incompetent and chaotic administration coupled with a cowardly Congress afraid to upset the ping-pong game. With all at stake, Congress is more worried about reelection and appeasing a tantrum-prone conman, and expert ping-pong player, than it is the destructive storm, hiding under their desks thinking this is enough storm protection. They are betraying us all.
8
The Trump-Regan comparison has another aspect not often mentioned. They are both phonies as presidents.
Regan was an actor, through and through. Although denigrated as a "B" actor, Reagan knew the power of a good act and knew what the character of a president of the US. All the pomp and tough rhetoric, the folksy good natured humor, all-American boy who loved the flag and apple pie. Without the intelligence, preparation or even the interest in policy, Regan sensed what moved his public and acted the way he needed to to be successful (winning the presidency). Of course he rose in the GOP having found that Democrats would never let him assume the heights he sought.
Trump is the consummate con man, simply the best ever. Trump was at the end of his rope with nowhere to turn. His last source of credit was Russia and they, dimwitted as they are, were catching on to him. His house was going to fall spectacularly. Putting his skills to the ultimate test, he sensed, with that innate ability con men have, what would resonate with, of course, the GOP.
Both, formerly Dems, knew their future was limited there.
Regan implied, "trust me." Trump repeatedly said, "Believe me." Subtly different but both coming from frauds.
They both took advantage of a public too ready to accept their grandiose rhetoric; both ready to sell out the country for personal gain. Neither had a clue, nor cared a wit for what was best for the US.
Of course Trump is worse than Regan - we've progressed.
6
I was no great fan of Reagan, but Reagan was no Trump and Trump is no Reagan. Anyone old enough to have a clear memory of both must strain to ferret out significant similarities. Trump visualizes no shining city on a hill; he visualizes Trump on a throne.
Indeed, I remain amazed that so many Republicans who worshipped Reagan until only a short time ago, have almost suddenly jumped on the Trump train. Such a shift is so profound that it that it demands utter political blindness (conned?), adoption of hypocrisy as a virtue, or simply and cynically making that well-known pact with the Devil. But there's an even worse and more dangerous possibility, a willingness to goose-step to authoritarian command. We all know where that leads.
4
The “crisis” with North Korea that DJT has so adroitly defused by conceding everything and gaining nothing, was a manufactured epic in the first place. The only crisis that truly existed was a sickeningly immature implication of war and an incredible, unseemly, exchange of nuclear invective. Was actual nuclear war a real possibility? Almost certainly not, but the horror of its spectre was enough to make the world take notice of Little Rocket Man and the Dotard.
History has been made at this summit on many different levels: it is the first time an American president has shaken hands with a North Korean leader. It is also the first time that puerile name calling has led to an incongruous peace summit, the success of which hinges on who succumbs to the next insult.
While Trump is in charge, tyranny has been brought to our doorsteps and ushered into our parlours. Russian perfidiousness haunts our most cherished democratic mechanisms, aided and abetted by traitors on our side who purport to lead and speak for us. Now, North Korea or the US could recant at any moment any new friendship with an undetermined outcome.
Our current existence is tragically precariousness. So called leaders flex their fragile characters, driven by ego and hubris, while the global public impotently look on the appalling spectacle unfolding in front of it. Who knows how far this will go.
History will judge this period as the Strangelove era as long as normality one day returns.
4
So if Mr. Stephens got his way Hillary Clinton would now be President and Kim would still be lobbing missiles and those three hostages would still be in jail.
I like the present situation better.
4
Kim is a great leader; Trudeau weak and dishonest. Are we ready to get rid of the electoral college yet?
12
Is North Korea going to give up the dream of reunifying the peninsula under their flag?
If US troops are eventually removed from South Korea that puts the dream of Un's father and grandfather within reach without nuclear weapons.
1
Now that you have seen how not to conduct high-stakes foreign policy, I eagerly await a column where Bret Stephens makes the full evolution to understanding and appreciating why the Iran deal was such a diplomatic triumph that needs to be defended and preserved. Nobody knew it was this complicated.
6
I listen to “Pod Save America”. On their Monday night pod they said that if the Trump-Kim meeting had something China really wanted that was bad. Guess what? China really doesn’t want the US to conduct military exercises with South Korea. Hello suckers.
12
Well one really fast way to get nothing from N. Korea would have been to continue with Joint Exercises with S. Korea. You have to concede something to get something. It is interesting to see that the press never looks very closely at the previous failed agreements with N. Korea by past US Presidents. What exactly did they concede to the N. Koreans in order to get them to sign them. Which is another point too, the problem in the past has largely been getting N. Korea not to abandon agreements they have agreed to, not getting them to agree in the first place.
“You have to concede something to get something.”
Yes, but the point is that Trump conceded something to get nothing. Unilateral concession of your main leverage in return for nothing and n pursuit of ingratiation is not a good deal.
2
ReSons to be worried, for sure. To make matters worse, Trump’s morning tweets today that are so rosy sound quite similar to the following historical line (look up from who and when): “I believe it is "peace for our time." Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”
4
Your last line plays with the concept of Trump as Kim’s doppelgänger, in particular, their menacing appetites for gluttony and grabbing the world’s attention through their heinous actions.
Both so-called leaders should be jettisoned into the dark holes of space for the damage they have caused their people. Unless Russia has totally undermined our election systems, we can change our leadership; unfortunately, the North Koreans are stuck with their Trump counterpart.
3
n an attempt to point out the differences between Reagan and Trump, he modulates to contrasting Kim to Gorbachev; followed by completely abandoning his motive for penning the piece in the first place and instead lobbing cheap shots at Trump for his own pleasure (ie. Stormy Daniels, Plaza Hotel etc.).
Admittedly there are similarities between Geneva and Singapore; but they might as well be coincidental, if not, meaningless.
The REAL differences which the author sloppily missed between Trump and Reagan are the finesse, the intellectual and communicative strengths, the strategic patience and moral courage that which the Gipper possessed. The man had more gusto in his big toe during the onset of Alzheimer’s than the entirety of Trump’s being has ever possessed even at the pinnacle of his health.
Long story short, I’m of the opinion that the biggest difference between Trump and Reagan is that Reagan wouldn’t have stood for a deal. He wouldn’t negotiate for the safety of our nation while ignoring the suffering of 25 million Koreans. He had a heart.
“[We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters."]” -Reagan 1964
2
In diplomacy, Trump is first and foremost the Anti-American. He is destroying important diplomatic relations with key long-term allies including Canada and Western European nations while promoting the interests of Russia. Trump's personal obligations to Putin supercede the diplomatic needs of the United States
What is most disturbing about our the crisis our country faces is that the two-party system has collapsed and the Republican one-party state allows an incompetent, ignorant comic to humiliate our country before the world.
Even Reaganite Republicans should be voting against those who support Trump. It is a patriotic duty for all Americans.
14
"it’s hard to see what the Singapore summit has achieved other than to betray America’s allies, our belief in human rights, our history of geopolitical sobriety and our reliance on common sense"
How true. Trump's brand of appeasement is especially noxious. His sole guiding light in this fiasco has been his desire to take home the Nobel Peace Prize. He has no understanding of either Korea. He sees hotels on beaches where the world sees the instruments of South Korea's catastrophic destruction. He is a naive simpleton among a forest of hungry monsters.
And he has the gall to tell the American people that there is no longer any nuclear threat from North Korea. Kim is a man of honor and love for his people, he says. And he comes home from this charade of a summit with a basket bereft of substance, not one thing new from past discussions with previous administrations.
He is a dupe of the first order. Kim has played him like the empty vessel he is.
And we are to believe that he has succeeded where real players have failed before?
Listen to him. Realize that every word out of his mouth is fakery and lies. Understand that our very survival depends on seeing through his babble to expose the liar behind the curtain.
Trump, but verify.
14
I see lots of vague fuzzy feel-good phrases in the brief joint statement that capped this summit. Where's the beef? Trump is smiling and waving, and I think he probably doesn't even realize, still, how 'played' he has been by Kim Jong Un and North Korea. The take-away from this summit is that Kim is a global player, and Trump is easy to fool... its all optics, without specifics, and nothing in the statements mentions any concrete actions, timelines, or actions the North Koreans will take. Trump bought this, hook, line and sinker. I'm surprised he didn't have Air Force One fly to Stockholm... he's so pathetic. Still, if, if, if... perhaps one should still hope that other, more pragmatic and schooled, skilled negotiators can step in now, and salvage something actionable from this confection of vagueness. Peace, however slowly and hesitantly it comes, is a worthwhile goal. I wonder if Trump will live long enough to see any of the things he so desperately wants to believe he's achieved actually happen. He's not a young person - Kim can just stall and out wait him. And walk away today with the prestige of being an equal to a US president, of having his status reinforced and validated by a US president while giving up nothing, except flowery words and vague promises. Trump Got Played.
4
Pretty good piece, loaded with folksy charm and wit. My one question, which one is the sinister glutton?
1
The Americans are anti-American.
We should stop trying to harm our own country. We keep doing it because we lack the faith so we foolishly believe in the sleazy politicians instead of the right principles.
Our presidents are in the business of creating the enemies instead of befriending everybody.
We are against the huge budget deficits, trade deficits and colossal national debt al long as the party we are voting for is in opposition. The very moment they grab the power we change our basic principles and embrace the policies we know to be extremely harmful to America.
We are actively trying to sabotage the negotiations and peace treaty with North Korea. It is impossible to make any deal if we refuse to trust them.
The problem is that the same politicians trying to forge the deal with North Korea have abandoned the similar treaty with Iran. We want to obstruct the political opposition even if their actions are in the best American interests.
We should not support any side if it creates a lot of enemies to America. We cannot aid Israel in the eternal occupation of the Palestinian land because it turns the Arab and the Muslim world against the US. We have to teach them how to live together in tolerance and cooperation. We cannot incite their worst fears.
We should neither support the Sunnis against the Shiites nor otherwise because by doing it we unnecessarily create the enemies.
We should teach all of them to be the friends…
You fail to mention one very disturbing difference: Trump is very possibly compromised by enemies of the state.
14
Trump is doing very well with his gut feelings. What don't you understand about negotiations, strategy and the presidency ? Can you dry cars for a living ? You certainly don't understand politics or foreign relations.
Bret, I did not need an ice cold shower this early in the morning! Your article is as logical as it is witty and, dare I say, entertaining. For the sake of us all on this planet, and like you, I pray you are wrong. However, I'm not betting against you.
2
Forgotten in even this criticism from Bret Stephens is the glaring fact that Trump has zero respect for democratic institutions and the rule of law, except as the media, elections and the Justice Department can be manipulated and corrupted to serve his power and profit. Here as everywhere, Trump insultingly brushes aside the world's democracies and human rights to assert his place on the global stage among the world's autocrats. He produces an exemplary propaganda video to show Kim the way forward together, while brazenly soliciting a bribe, admiring the North Korean coastline "from a real estate point of view." His unconcealed admiration for Kim's ruthless wielding of despotic power is as genuine as his admiration for Putin's. He sounds positively wistful that he is not as young as Kim, without enough years to achieve what he might. It is not mysterious; it is what it appears: aspirational envy, plain and simple. "Lock her up!" He holds a truly frightening 44% support grounded in blinding white nationalist bigotry and and anti-elite resentment. He is constitutionally incapable of seeing America apart from his own self-aggrandizement. Reread the Federalist Papers. Trump is the demagogic tyrant the Founders feared. Failure to grasp this fully in all its ugly truth is the greatest peril in American history.
10
Kim is motivated by personal greed; so is Trump.
5
Trump had said that he wanted to share a burger with Kim and he did.
At great cost to American prestige Trump served up a nothing-burger!
7
Can you imagine what the Republicans would have said if Obama acted the way that Trump had with North Korea? How can he immediately trust a despot who has caused so much misery to his people?
3
What is the new definition of things?
So many things are going to take place or be negotiated or end.
What are these things?
Are they quarter pounders? Or, as the progenitor of these things likes to say, nothingburgers? (I hate that made up word)
2
Dear Bret, gracing this President with comparisons to even the Alzheimer afflicted Reagan is far too kind. DJT's Presidency will be pithily summed up by: "I am not really a President, but I play one on tv," followed by "I am not a crook." How much naked corruption and unfathomable incompetence can Republicans stomach? How odd that this incredibly low bar maybe the litmus test for the Republic for the next 3 years.
13
Excellent analysis- you forget the video. Who else but Trump would threaten N Korea on the day of an important summit? What genius in the Trump entourage allowed that? Trump sees condos with his name. S Korea brokered this deal and stands to either gain or lose big time. They have the vibrant economy and with Trump’s tariffs looming N Korea will be a fertile ground for their expertise. Trump pulled out of TPP - China and Russia filled the void. Trump the elder statesman - dream on. A cheap NY hood bested by China, N and S Korea.
3
We live in a complicated world at a complex time.George Bush before his Middle East misadventure bragged that he did not do nuance. Trump flies by the seat of his pants like an old time Hollywood producer. Brainpower in the White House has been replaced by instinct and feel. As Trump would say. Not good.
4
Nice list of doubts. The liberal list of doubts was even longer when he first announced his candidacy.
2
And every one of them has been proven to be well justified.
5
True, they all believed he had 0 chance but he won anyway and as President, he is successfully overturning all Obama policies like his policy of appeasing N.Korea which got nowhere in 8 years.
Good to see that Bret Stephens has finally choked on and started rejecting the Trump Kool-Aid that his fellow Republicans happily keep drinking. Last night was evidence of that as Mark Sanford, a rare Republican gadfly on Trump, lost his first election ever to a committed Kool-Aid drinking Trumpist. And Tim Kaine's path to re-election was eased as the same Kool-Aid drinkers nominated a virulent racist connected with the organizers of Charlottesville over more rational alternative.
We no longer have a "Conservative" party but a Trumpist Party who openly embrace a fascist ideology, with the Mussolini-like refrain of "But the economy is booming" which sounds just like "But he made the trains run on time."
Republicans who viciously criticized Obama for sitting down with Raoul Castro and "giving up concessions and getting nothing" are insanely trying to spin that this, SOMEHOW is "completely different". And they are right. Cuba's close, Korea's far. Cuba's not nuclear, North Korea is. Cuba is not a threat to us or our neighbors, North Korea is. Obama didn't give up major components of our national security to appease Castro. Trump instantly dropped joint military exercises (which both Russia and China want ended) and has been looking to pull our troops out for years. In exchange for....a vague, unenforceable promise with no verification to de-nuclearize, and no promise to ease rights violations.
Yes, Trump is a sucker backed by half a nation of Kool Aid drinkers.
6
And what, exactly has "my touch, my feel" gotten us? Those attributes gave us Flynn, Bannon, Manafort, Pruitt, Price, "coffee boy," and on and on and on.
To his credit, at least the president didn't lie to us this time. He didn't tell us "Based on my analysis."
2
The real problem here is that the South Koreans will be the ones to pay for Trumps hubris-bound deal.
4
I don’t find a lot of difference between trump’s “my touch, my feel” and George W. Bush’s looking into Putin’s eyes and “getting a sense of (his) soul.”
Both are equally absurd and equally dangerous for the US.
4
The American problem is that we truly believe we could win the elections by being outrageously stupid.
That’s why we try to sabotage the peace deals with Iran and North Korea.
We firmly believe that a war is the better choice than the peace.
By destructing the bridges to other nations we are pushing America into the bloody conflicts with them as it previously happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Are we now better off, safer or wealthier as consequence of such a strategy?
If our most dangerous economic opponent is China, then the real maneuvering is about controlling the natural resources needed for the manufacturing.
The largest reserves of natural resources are in Russia.
We tried to lure Ukraine into the NATO instead of Moscow, thus we turned Kremlin from a friend into an enemy.
Was that catastrophic strategic blunder somehow Trump’ fault too?
We were chasing the support of the minor European capitals while pushing the grand prize into the Chinese hands.
That’s what Trump is trying to reverse. Of course, he must be critical of the allies in Europe that failed to understand the great picture or failed to stop us from jumping head first into the unnecessary conflict in the Middle East.
The real friends should prevent you fromdrunk driving. The Western allies have failed us over the last quarter of century!
We have failed ourselves too!
Trump's behavior this week has done so much damage to the U.S. that one starts to wonder if he could be tried for treason, regardless of the outcome of the Russia investigation. He seems more interested in a potential Trump hotel on a North Korean beach, that in the best interests of the U.S.
2
The entire episode in Singapore could have been a cleverly staged parody. As such, it would have been more believable than the event itself. It would all be hilarious if the stakes weren't so lethal for the human species.
7
It was just two hucksters conducting a photo-shoot to be processed separately by their own propaganda ministries.
4
The analogy with Reagan and the collapse of the Soviet Union is tempting. The obvious differences in character and motives are well articulated by Mr. Stephens.
In the broader Geopolitical sphere at the time, the crumbling Soviet Union had nowhere and no one to turn to. This is not the case for North Korea.
The duplicitous behavior of China and how far it's economic tentacles reach into the calculus of our European allies may well hold the fate of the Trump initiative. Seems like there is more than one leader to charm and establish a Reaganesque type of relationship with.
Very smart column. Thank you, and I hope the Trump supporters start paying attention. I was no fan of Reagan, and I understand quite fully that on the domestic front, Trump, Ryan and McConnell are hoping to finish what Reagan started, the destruction of America's safety net. But I didn't doubt that Reagan, while not a detail or policy oriented fellow himself, had the good sense to find and listen to smart advisers, and I knew he wouldn't betray this country to its enemies. The good old days.
3
Kim is not, unlike Gorbachev, the leader of a superpower. He is the leader of a rogue nation who just scored a huge PR coup.
Reagan wasn't all that but he was surrounded by serious people. Something Trump most definitely is not.
5
Depressingly true. Trump looked into Kim's eyes, saw another dictator he liked -- or at least could share a kimchee burger with -- and gave away the farm. He legitimized Kim's murderous regime in the eyes of the world, weakened our security umbrella for South Korea and Japan, promised to remove our troops from the Korean Peninsula and gave Russia and China the nod, albeit unwittingly, to lift sanctions on North Korea. All this for nothing more than a photo op.
5
Mr. Stephens you have absolutely no idea what the details of the discussions were about, so why embarrass yourself by speculating. Not only do we talk to despots, we support and prop them up, so please spare us your pearl clutching that we would discuss, with a nuclear power, the prospects of giving up those nuclear weapons.
It truly is amazing watch both the neocons and neoliberals panic and scramble to try in every way to sabotage this potential deal that is a work in progress.
While hardly a Trump supporter, I appreciate that he has finally broken with the ossified established order and is at least trying something. I heard some MSNBC commentator derisively say this was unprecedented. Do you mean like when Nixon went to China?
Who knows where this may end up, but at least we are talking, and as long as we are doing that we are avoiding military conflict.
2
Great analysis, Mr. Stephens! Clearly, Trump believes that all complex problems are actually simple ones, that everything is reducible to attitude and personality, that Kim's history of atrocity, murder, forced starvation, political imprisonment, nuclear threats should be swept under the rug (let bygones be bygones ---- simple, like a good bankruptcy wipes away the past financial complexities gone wrong). He just wants to sign his name no matter the contents of the document and win the Nobel Prize, all his own past misdeeds (not to mention those of Cohen, Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Papadopoulos, junior Trump, Stone) hoovered up and dumped in history's dust bin: a cakewalk!
3
There was no question that Ronald Reagan loved his country and what he did was on behalf of the country. People may question some of his policies and beliefs but no one could question his patriotism and love of country.
Donald Trump only loves himself.
13
Never forget that if Geneva Redux eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, this very collapse globally unleashed the worst in the so-called Western World: the overwhelming power of financial capitalism , free to impose values far from John Winthrop's City upon a Hill as Reagan mythifically cherished it, the rebirth of religious fundamentalism ( first against USSR then against the West ), the strengthening of the government seen as a problem and not a solution, the sacralization of the individual to the benefit of lucrative entertainment...I could go on.
If Donald Trump personal strategy works, one may well wonder what could be unleashed afterwards, other than taking for granted the general rejection of multilaterism to the benefit of self-centered powers essentially driven by their own greed.
1
Re trump's "“My touch, my feel.”"
Ego-mania!
6
Neither Ronald Reagan nor Donald Trump are considered very smart nor wise men. Neither man hsd an intellectual socioeconomic political scientific technological shining mind light.
But Reagan, unlike Trump, was mature, temperate and secure. Reagan served in the American military and had only two wives.
Kim Jong Un rationally and reasonably wants to remain alive and in power. Mr. Kim took power when he was 26 years old and is now 34 years old. Just old enough to be in the House but not yet old enough to be President. Yet Mr. Kim has more experience and talent governing a nation state than Donald Trump and his Cabinet and White House staff combined.
8
I believe that the apt comparison is with Chamberlain's Peace in our Time.
10
Another big difference between Donald and Ronald is that Donald is currently under a very expansive investigation by a very skilled team led by a very able, very special prosecutor. I think that Donald is desperate to prove his worth by accomplishing something no other President has done to immunize himself against what he knows may come out of the Mueller probe. The results of this effort with North Korea may well be that he got played, but he will spin it to his supporters and so will Fox News so that his base will be even more protective of their chosen leader.
I really believe that every move this malignant narcissist makes needs to be viewed through the prism of how it benefits him.
12
Nixon goes to China? His diplomatic accomplishments were genuine, but they didn't save his Presidency.
1
Trump has (note: "has"," as in fait accompli) cast off alliances established before he was born in favor joining forces with an Asia-only axis: North Korea, China, Russia. Barring a revolt --soon, very soon-- in Congress, this is a done deal.
America's last democratically held national election occurred on Nov. 6, 2012. The 2016 contest does not count, thanks to the weight of Putin's thumb on the result. If Trump is not impeached and ridden out of Washington during the two years after this year's election, Trump will "win" the 2020 "election" with a 90%+ margin of victory, and he will still complain it was rigged against him.
RIP United States of America.
5
Trump could have easily traded ending the joint exercises for the immediate dismantling of the cannons that are aimed at Seoul.
4
We should remember the conversations between Trump and Mexico President Peña Nieto as reported in Vox right after inauguration last year.
' “We find this completely unacceptable for Mexicans to pay for the wall that you are thinking of building,” Peña Nieto told Trump. Trump told Peña Nieto “I have to” say Mexico will pay for the wall because “I have been talking about it for a two year period.” Trump suggested they both say “we will work it out” when asked about it.'
Clearly, Peña Nieto has the integrity of telling the truth to his people, and our people. Who knows what Kim is willing to do in Trump's reality TV show in boost its rating? There was an old word for it: propaganda.
2
Thank heavens for Mr. Stephen’s continuing voice of reason in regards to Trump. As it appears that more and more legislators are reluctant to pop their heads out of the foxhole, we need to hear that real conservatives haven’t all abandoned their principles in fealty to the president. As Breitbart, Fox, and much of the right wing outlets start sounding like state run media, it’s good to see (at least some) journalists do what most of them got into the business for in the first place.
3
Great analysis; splendid final line. I expect we’ll see news of Trump hotel in NK any day now.
5
One distinction between Trump and Reagan was that Reagan had a first class cabinet and was comfortable working with cleverer, better informed people. He didn't need to be the smartest guy in the room. A second distinction was his affability which made him comfortable to work with. Compare the people in the Reagan administration to the revolving door crowd of hucksters, self promoters, sycophants, no-nothings that make up the Trump court. What a parcel of rogues in a nation.
11
Bret, absolutely excellent analysis and writing. Thank you.
3
The Donald believes in “my touch, my feel".
David Cameron did the same in the UK and now we have Brexit - unintended consequences.
4
Comparing Reagan and Trump is useless. Different times, different era…
Proverb “trust but verify” is completely useless here.
The first step is to create a relationship. Trump did it. He understands perfectly well that treating people nicely is prerequisite for “bona fide”. That opens all the doors.
If you treat people with respect, they will respond positively too. Trump is trying to build up the trust level.
There is no single reason for America and North Korea to be in conflict or have hostile relationship.
Trump wants to end it. His actions are a slap in the face to all presidents since Nixon, including Reagan, because none of them fixed this problem.
Richard Nixon should have done it. The very moment he created the cordial relationship with China he should have signed the peace treaty with Pyongyang.
The internal problems in North Korea are none of our business. We cannot support and protect the tyrants in power like we have been doing in Egypt and Saudi Arabia (or Shah’s Iran), but signing the peace treaty with any of them is a part of presidential duty to protect America.
The regime of Kim Jong Un is not our problem. Everything a single bullet can change is not a matter of our national security.
Our chronic support for the current allies that oppress their local population or occupy the other countries for decades certainly is.
2
Here is a story. In a certain town, there are two physicians, whom I will call Ann and Liz. Of course the two are competitors. Ann does not have a high opinion of Liz and advises her friends not to consult Liz. All quite ordinary.
Now suppose a friend of Ann's takes her child to Liz. Ann is not going to predict a good outcome. She may predict dire results. If the child does not get well, Liz will say, "I told you so." If the child does get well, Liz will say, "It was just a fluke. She is still a lousy physician."
Moreover, Ann is not going to admit that she might have some prejudice against Liz as competitor. In order for her judgments to have credibility Ann must pretend that her judgments are objective. She may even think so herself.
Now replace Ann by the Democrats and Liz by Trump. Everything that the Democrats say now becomes completely understandable. It is inevitable that they will predict dire results from the Trump-Kim meeting.
And, anything good which happens under Trump is either a fluke or it is really Obama who gets the credit for (say) the low unemployment.
And, I do NOT blame either Ann or the Democrats. It is perfectly human to act as they do.
But WE would be fools if we take Ann or the Democrats at face value, which is what far too many of my friends are doing.
Sorry about the typos. Here the correction.
" She may predict dire results. If the child does not get well, Ann will say, "I told you so." If the child does get well, Ann will say, "It was just a fluke. Liz is still a lousy physician."
You leave a few things out here. Let's say that Liz has a "medical degree" from a diploma mill and that the AMA has given her a very low rating, but she breezes into town and with the aid of financial backing from shady sources and sets up a clinic. Most other doctors, and not just Ann, will tell you privately that Liz is incompetent, but once she establishes a practice, professional ethics make them feel obliged to pretend that they respect her. She then puts huge billboards along the highway, featuring glamor pictures of herself, and she shows up at town hall meetings mainly to shove herself in front of cameras and scream about vaccines or flouridation or whatever happens to be the latest pop hysteria. Suppose she's spotted cheering at a KKK rally. Would you trust your kids to that doctor?
" Let's say that Liz has a "medical degree" from a diploma mill and that the AMA has given her a very low rating, but she breezes into town and with the aid of financial backing from shady sources and sets up a clinic."
So you are adding facts which were not part of my story and assuming with absolutely NO evidence that Ann, who is actually a hypothetical person, has objective reasons for her prejudice against Liz.
But if you were talking about MONEY, here are figures about campaign expenses in 2016.
Hillary Clinton raised $1,191 million. Trump raised $646.8 million dollars.
You Democrats are living in a land of fantasy which survives only because you never bother to check the facts. You assume with no evidence that Trump spent more money than Hillary did. Oh, well...
In this insipid President's mind, he may see this as high risk, tight wire diplomacy. However bold moves, to be POSITIVELY meaningful in areas this complex require extensive groundwork, pre-concessions and a strong framework for peaceful negotiations. The real danger here is that the US having postured this way- granted with some element of undetermined South Korean support- will be boxed in if Kim should renege or violate the PERCEIVED (or WILLED) intent of these negotiations. This will in turn INCREASE and not DECREASE the likelihood for confrontation.
Those on the Left make take solace in Trump's rejection of military exercises as provocative and wrong- but I can assure you the nature of these negotiations are so inverted and perverted as make the situation with this concession even more dangerous.
But in the realm of sound bytes, phony posturing and Fox News disinformation- this is a solid victory for all parties.
2
Trump’s idea of diplomacy is “ Let’s see what happens “. Comparing him to past presidents is futile. He should be evaluated, and treated, as a mental patient, not as a president or a diplomat.
16
Why does my mind's eye keep bringing up an old, old photograph of Neville Chamberlain, debarking from a plane and waving a piece of paper that he described as "peace in our time". That was in the October of 1938, and "our time" lasted a bit less than a year.
6
First of all, hopefully Chelsea Clinton's children will not be president. There are many other children candidates out there in the world. Secondly, this is an awfully vitriolic opinion piece. Could the author tone his language down to become more "credible"?
On another front, could Trump now proceed to try to re-open relations with Cuba too? Cuba is far less threatening to the US than North Korea, more pro-market even within the socialist/communist framework, more open to US business. Is it that South Koreans are more tolerant, more willing to normalize relations with the North than Miami Cubans with their counterparts in the island? Is there any sophisticated leader and counterpart to Moon Jae-in in the Cuban American community of Miami or the US? (Certainly not Rubio and less so Ted Cruz).
Given what's at risk to this country and the rest of the world, I'd say the author was pretty restrained.
1
Imagine how this will play out; Kim will stall and stall to a point where Trump sees he was played then goes ballistic with the embarrassment of it all, with truly serious consequences. How can this possibly end well?
6
This op-ed is rightly cynical. Some may cringe at the comparison with Reagan and say that to be "anti" is a good thing. Good luck with that view. Reagan's foreign policy had significant flaws and did engage in some high risk behaviors. But he and his team were credible on the world stage. They strengthened, not weakened traditional alliances. The US has never been known for compassionate foreign policy- despite the public brainwashing. Cynical power triangulation has always been at its core. However, it generally has sought stability, allied support and economic stability (admittedly at the expense of third world nations). Trump has thrown all of this out the window- taking the the grade if you will from a C- D+ to an E- The worst of all worlds.
4
I was never a big Reagan fan, but I never doubted that he could conduct the business of America with respect, intelligence, and common decency. And even though I wasn't an all-in Reagan supporter, I never doubted that he had fundamental American values central to his being. It is frightening to watch Trump give away American moral leverage to a despot because there are significant and verifiable doubts that Trump has any fealty to American values or respect for human decency.
8
The US media collectively failed to notice what was happening in China during the Singapore Swing. President Xi of China hosted Putin in Beijing. These two were close by watching their man Kim Jung-un dance with their puppet Trump.
All three wanted the promise to suspend war 'games' on and near the Korean peninsula with the extended goal of reduction in US troops. And they were the big winners because Trump gave them exactly that without apparently consulting anyone else.
Talk of peace is always better than comparing the size of nuclear buttons. This night of the stars show produced and directed by Trump was big on production value only. The details have been left for the days to come.
The most honest moment of the whole TV show was when Trump admitted that if in 6 months he must say that North Korea has not lived up to the promises made, he will have to make up a story why and blame someone else.
As far as Trump is concerned, it is all a fake show for ratings. The others are playing for real and they have their moves already planned out. Kim will move forward with the help of China and Russia to extend some economic relief to his citizens while keeping his country closed to the prying eyes of the west.
3
We should not forget that Trump raised tensions in the first place. Trump and his team were so offended by the traditional threats of the Kim that Trump elevated the possibility for war. Everything Kim does is to keep rule in his own country. That said, Trump is also in a situation that goes back to the original crisis in 1950. He is part of a larger saga that Truman mismanaged to start. To bring peace now, however it occurs, is probably good. The US cannot always get the best deal, despite what Trump thinks. He finally went against his own vision and hopefully it works out well.
2
One thing we know for sure, Mr. Stephens, is that the Singapore meeting achieved even less than the negotiations with Iran did, and you called that a bad deal. Iran currently has no nuclear weapons. North Korea does. The Iran deal did not require a summit meeting with the American President, The Singapore meeting was a summit meeting with the American President. The Iran deal appeared (and still appears) to be a solid basis for further negotiations. People are already talking about how Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim might either or both renege. Mr. Trump was eager to pull out of one, while he wanted the other one really badly.
At least neither appeared to have your support. We can always take comfort in that, I suppose.
6
"It would also be nice to think that Trump is playing geopolitical chess at a level plodding pundits can scarcely conceive."
But we know better. What has Trump ever done in his past that would indicate that Trump plays chess at all?
7
We all hope that we are wrong. That Trump might actually be on to something - I truly wish him well - or that if he isn't, the adults in the room will take control and make things right. Even though we keep hearing that Americans have lost faith in our institutions, in fact we haven't-- Trump continues to be enabled by our profound belief that our institutions are strong enough to protect us from one term of executive misadventure. But our faith is misplaced. We know that the framers feared despotism and built safeguards into our constitutional structure. Domestically, those safeguards are actually working, for now. The problem is that in foreign affairs, our institutional framework is built solely on trust, with far fewer checks and balances on the president's authority, except in the case of declaring war (but not starting a war). We've seen what Trump is doing with our once-trusting allies. So that feeling you might have about the adults in the room? They're probably not there.
6
The overriding issue at the heart of the Trump-Kim summit "denuclearization" was not addressed. Since Hiroshima, there have been many who joined the nuclear club, but no one has left. That is the reality and the legacy of the nuclear age. It's weapons are the ultimate insurance to survival against all potential external threats. To have one nuclear power ask another to disarm is folly. And that is the ultimate difference between Reagan-Gorbachev and Trump-Kim. The Soviet Union may have collapsed under the pressure of the nuclear arms race, but Russia still has them. There is no "ultimate deal" to be made that requires North Korea to denuclearize. The only viable policy is the one that kept the peace during the nearly half century of the Cold War--MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction coupled with treaties on arms reductions. That policy called "detente" was a legacy of our last Trump-like President, Richard Nixon, and it's the only viable, peaceful path forward.
4
Qaddafi unsubscribed. From the club and his daily update.
Trump sold out American interests so that HE could look good and have the appearance of a deal with Kim. Again, optics matter vastly more to Trump than substance.
22
What price a Nobel Prize?
Trump's slavishness to Kim out of an underlying goal of securing a "victory" at any cost, a Nobel Peace Prize down the road, is actually funny if you think of his presidency as a brilliant satirical movie.
But if you view the world through pragmatism, it was an unmitigated disaster.
Donald Trump was so eager to secure a "deal" that he must have warmed Kim up in that solitary room by offering him cessation of war games aas a prize he hadn't yet earned.
Frankly, that alone was astounding, even before you had to listen to a syrupy Donald Trump describe Kim's personality in terms befitting of Ghandi.
You really can't make this stuff up. The Times op-video mashup of the White House "glorified vision" mini-film was extremely funny, for antiTrumpers.
But for the average Joe, who has been listening to Donald Trump paint his bumbling presidency as the second coming of God knows who, it smacked of a huge let down.
So much hype, so little truth. The problem with Donald is less Kim than the country he's ruling. He makes the mistake of assuming that everything he wants, America wants.
Which is a pretty tall order since most Americans don't have his connections, his chutz-pah, or his capacity for lying.
We aren't yet halfway through the year, and Season Two of "Trump Goes to Washington is certainly topping Season One. Which begs the question, what on earth can come next?
29
This is a very revealing moment in our history. Conservatives don't know what to make of Trump but support him because whether the like him or not, he is delivering a conservative agenda.
True, that agenda is like putting lipstick on a pig but that's what it is and that's who they are.
On the other hand, the Democrats, mistakenly described as the liberals, have assumed their usual role of opposing anything and everything Trump does, even if it might lessen the prospects of war.
The party that supports gay marriage and civil rights also supports our wars for global domination, including Bush's tragedy in the Middle East.
They supported Obama's destruction of our privacy and civil liberties. And the militarization of our police at home has proceeded in cities controlled by Dem's as well as the GOP.
This is not to obscure the real differences between the two parties. But in international affairs, both pursue a dangerous and mendacious agenda to dominate and control. Bush sought regime change in seven nations but only achieved three. Obama's contribution was to add two more to the list.
In the end, it is we the people who are the losers. Global warming is about to plunge the world into periods of massive human disruption. Our global strategy should be one of cooperation based on interdependence. Instead, we get war and the threat of more war.
Trump's meeting with Kim may postpone this tragedy, but it will not alter its terrible logic. For that our voices must be heard.
6
Disrupting everything in sight without any analysis in depth is the complete opposite of conservatism. Conservatives conserve, liberals liberate, reactionaries react, and adverbs are verbs modified to be used as nouns.
The fact that Trump had to meet with Kim alone for five minutes makes the entire summit suspect. Since he refused transparency in those moments you can bet this is where he dirtied whatever "deal" is supposedly on record. Recall Trump trying to beg Mexican President Nieto to use say he would pay for the wall during a phone call, the deals with Qatar and the affection for Putin. He is always looking for personal gain aside from adulation from his "base".
14
Both of these clowns bamboozle their publics with propaganda. They just negotiated a you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours photo-op to be edited according to the needs of their respective isolated publics, one watching Kim's telescreens, the other watching Fox News.
That was probably a 5 minute call to Putin.
The real problem is Trump and his administration are anti-fact.
23
They believe that facts can be projected by sheer force of will.
This is nothing new for the GOP. Remember Bush/Cheney and their plan to "go above" the news filter? They paid commentators to support their policies. They hired actors to make fake "news" segments from nonexistent local stations, then distributed those videos to other local stations, some of which unsuspectingly played them. Conservative pundits accused news stations of "not supporting the troops" if they published the truth about Iraq, rather than happy-talk stories of glorious victories. Well, maybe they just weren't totalitarian enough to control the message completely. We'll soon find out how well that works, but I'll give you a hint what I think -- no one in the USSR ever believed a word they saw in Pravda.
Whatever concessions Trump may have received from Kim, I doubt if they included Trump's demand that Kim train his nuclear arsenal on Canada. Isn't Canada a national security threat according to Trump's trade policy?
14
Trump seems to believe there are mothballed basic steel mills and aluminum smelters ready for immediate startup here in the US.
5
Very astute analysis.
Also, expect Trump to undermine our democratic allies in that region. Also, he'd prefer his Korean resort to be in a unified Korean Peninsula run entirely by Kim, than in any kind of democratic unified Peninsula.
21
For years to come, North Korea will have an excuse to maintain their nucleair armament and suppression: negociations will never, never end. Meanwhile, sanctions will be lifted because of these talks. A very, very bad day for non-proliferation.
32
By the mad master negotiator who gives up the store and gets little if substance in return
US to this incompetent bully
You’re fired.
Give it a year and see if North Koreans are able to plan and request immigration to the U.S. and if there is talk of a unified Asian currency similar to Bitcoin. Point being, whether or not there is an economic pivot toward North Korea quickly developing into one of the fastest growing economies, complete with stock market and fancy hotels built with Chinese know how.
2
Fancy hotels named TRUMP.
The unstated and undisclosed result of this circus in Singapore is the effective end of the Korean War.
One of the things that has held it all up was the concern that any agreement would formally recognize the the North’s brutal regime. Trump has resolved all this, he’s now best buddies with Asia’s version of Stalin, and he couldn’t be more thrilled. He even had a video made in anticipation of the conclusion where negotiation was mostly limited as to little more than agreeing on the frequency of bathroom breaks.
How we got to this period of terminal weirdness should occupy pundits on MSNBC and CNN greatly while I visit the Deporation Memorial in Paris, which is where I happen to be, as a reminder of how it all can end.
20
This comment reminds me, that those cherishing Mr. Trump’s supposed results always neglect, that his professional life, other than as a bitter m feeding reality star, was a string of failures, lies and bankruptcies. Claiming a result that is not there is part of that. ‘Effectively ending the Korean War’ is a laughable statement. The actual war has ceased a long time and the absence of a peace treaty (Germany has none) just allows for US troops to be there. And the threat? NC’s threat was always a retaliatory threat.
Trump’s new buddy is the same who blows his uncle to shreds with a cannon.
2
The end of the war means demobilization of land armies.
Thank you Bret Stephens for not pretending the emperor has clothes. Trump is in deep over his head in this office, and has an inability to distinguish between reality and what he wishes was true, in addition to being completely uninformed, and it is simply wishful thinking to suppose that these traits are not as obvious to foreign leaders are they are to the people who have dealt with him at home.
69
The media and Americans in general in trying to understand the implications of the Singapore Summit are asking about Kim, "Can someone change so quickly?"
Perhaps what is changing is not Kim but the way he is being presented to the American people by our government and media. Perhaps what he appears to be now is precisely who he has been all along. It is extremely unlikely that an essentially absolute ruler who is the incompetent buffoon portrayed over the years by our government and media would have been able to successfully organize and preside over a nuke and missile program that many countries with greater financial and material resources can only dream about.
Perhaps we are so surprised because we have been kidding ourselves all along. Perhaps we may be where we are today precisely because the government came to believe its own spin on North Korean reality. Self-delusion rarely works out well.
I do not know how this all started, whether successive administrations chose to believe analyses from a self-aggrandizing intelligence community that no President has chosen to hold accountable, or that good intelligence was superseded by political myopia and self-delusion, or something else. In any case, it is imperative that our government and media consider the possibility that, like it or not, Kim may have been a very capable and savvy leader all along.
As to the summit itself, as with most "policies" and pronouncements, the devil is in the details, tweets irrelevant.
4
If brutalizing or killing those not in agreement or imprisoning and enslaving your citizens is savvy and capable. Kim may be the ideal leader to guide us into a future. Yikes.
Well, the media is still calling DJT leader of the free world....for some reason
One of Kim's teachers when he was educated in Switzerland testified that Kim was a modest well behaved, seemingly normal student who walked to school and gave no hint of being wealthy or the son of a powerful dictator. Trump, by comparison, was an unmanageable hell raiser from the very beginning, who bullied other students and had to be sent to military school. What does that tell us?
Six bankruptcies ten billion dollars squandered, the Trump deal making is neither policy nor strategy but delusional thinking on behalf of an even more delusional self-aggrandizement. End of story.
33
Didn't the fall of Gorbachev have something to do with our own approach to Russia during the subsequent years? Had we done things differently, things might have turned out differently for Russia. In hindsight, tearing down the wall might have been just the beginning of what perhaps could and should have been a far more serious, diligent, protracted effort and engagement on our part. Such thoughts indicate that the Trump effort will not make traction, given that this big showy meeting in Singapore might be all that he was looking for.
6
Gorbachev thought that Western Europe and the United States would bail out the bankrupt Soviet state out of appreciation for his decision to let go of Eastern Europe. Whoops! Gorbachev failed to realize that the Unites States and its allies in Europe would always regard the USSR as an enemy, no matter how friendly it was behaving with Gorbachev in charge, and that they would never help out their mortal enemy. All of that talk from American officials about the great statesman Gorbachev, Gorbachev the visionary reformer, etc., etc., was just empty rhetoric. They were flattering Gorbachev for caving in and giving them everything they wanted. One of the several reasons why many Russians regard Gorbachev as an idiot.
1
Interesting, thanks--
"Purity of" wrote:
"Gorbachev thought that Western Europe and the United States would bail out the bankrupt Soviet state out of appreciation for his decision to let go of Eastern Europe. Whoops! Gorbachev failed to realize that the Unites States and its allies in Europe would always regard the USSR as an enemy, no matter how friendly it was behaving with Gorbachev in charge, and that they would never help out their mortal enemy. All of that talk from American officials about the great statesman Gorbachev, Gorbachev the visionary reformer, etc., etc., was just empty rhetoric. They were flattering Gorbachev for caving in and giving them everything they wanted. One of the several reasons why many Russians regard Gorbachev as an idiot."
Though Mr. Stephens ultimately expresses a healthy skepticism of Trump's Korea deal, he makes sure to cushion it with a bedding of soft, fuzzy, conservative fairy tales. But it wasn't St. Reagan's "inner pragmatism and visionary imagination" that brought the Cold War to an end, it was Gorbachev's recognition that the West had won the economic race and that the Soviet system was about to collapse from exhaustion. Furthermore, that the Cold War would not last forever wasn't something "few others could see," it was in fact a central element of the containment strategy pursued by both Republican and Democratic administrations and paid for with the blood of both Republican and Democratic soldiers. Likewise, if and when Kim is ready to strike a deal with the US and its allies, it will be because he realizes that his country's isolation is economically and socially unsustainable, not because he is charmed by Trump. The fable that it's the unique strategic vision of Republican presidents that leads to the triumph of open societies, rather than decades of carefully formulated policy and shared sacrifices by those societies, is what paved the way for an imperious charlatan like Trump.
101
One of the few who could see the Cold War ending was Jimmy Carter. He ended sales of grain and technology and limited oil and gas exports to our adversary the Soviet Union. This hurt him politically and affected our economy but it also cramped the Soviet economy and military. (Reagan promptly reversed these on coming into office, thereby helping both economies.) Carter also enhanced the triad defense system ( he knew what this was) and foresaw the entire Soviet system failing. Reagan saw a far more powerful Russia. In a few years they were suing for peace.
Bret, you and your fellow non-Trumpist conservatives have to start a third Party, not with the ambition to become a major Party but to stop Trumpism. If a conservative Party could win even 10% of the vote in various elections, and especially in 2020, it would have saved the Republic. What are you and your colleagues waiting for?
33
“For now, however, it’s hard to see what the Singapore summit has achieved other than to betray America’s allies, our belief in human rights, our history of geopolitical sobriety and our reliance on common sense. For what? A photo op with a sinister glutton and his North Korean counterpart?”
It’s worth remembering that the current South Korean government is overrun by ideologues who sympathized heavily with the traditional North Korea’s stance that the US was responsible for the division of the Korean people (never mind the Korean war started by communists); that the US was exploiting Koreans economically (never mind the mind-blowing growth of South Korea in the past half century); the US was aiding SK’s human rights violations (never mind what NK is doing, and SK’s free elections). To them, Trump’s freeze of military drills and mention of troop withdrawals are a dream come true.
Economic, military might and a robust democracy was costly to build.. and it’s all put at risk because of a man’s ego and admiration for dictators. l of its decades-long ally SK at risk. I fear for my and my home country’s future.
9
Stephens mentions Geneva. He should have mentioned Reykjavik. Trump could not go into detail in his discussions with Kim, nor could he produce anything beyond the most basic commitments because he could not afford to have the talks collapse, as they did at Reykjavik. Trump wouldn't dare risk tackling any big issues because this summit was not about actually trying to accomplish anything.
The point of Trump's presidency, if you will, is to keep the American people appropriately satiated with flashy imagery and emotionally charged and divisive statements that play to their basest instincts while Trump and his cronies stuff the courts with far-right ideologues and set up systematically deconstructing or corrupting the federal bureaucracy.
Hence the attacks on trade with foreigners, and the empty "peace" with Kim that will "bring the troops home." From Asia. Where they aren't actually fighting anyone but where they are there to keep any fighting from breaking out, something that is most certainly in America's national interest. These kinds of messages appeal to the simple folk. The working stiffs that Trump counts on to be content with rhetoric and a reality-t.v. presidency.
24
I hope the #unsubscribe crowd can remove their ideological blinders long enough to see the value in this column. It's often much more powerful when a conservative lambasts Trump than a (predictable) left-winger. One gets to see from a new perspective just how lousy our current president is.
27
Trump usually alternates between incoherence and demented behavior with only occasional albeit brief periods of lucidity which is not a formula for successful negotiations with a wily tyrant.
14
I must have missed the brief periods of lucidity that you mention.
I'm glad you acknowledge the importance of Gorbachev in Reagans negotiations with the soviet union. Gorbachev's openings were probably much more important than any of Reagan's taunts or threats, but one has to give Reagan credit for doing a good job in taking advantage of the opportunity.
6
Trump has "tells."
You can tell when he is selling by the repeated emphasis.
For example: We will save so much money by ending the joint military exercises, blindsiding the Pentagon, and even his v.p.
Trump came away with a kiss and a promise.
His distraction game is good too, the financials released on his daughters income during the N.K. meeting.
De Niro, and Trump on 5th Ave., Scorsese or Tarantino as referee.
11
Oh, and remember Reagan had Alzheimer’s. Trump probably doesn’t but he has the distinction of being in reality a failed businessman who has been able to construct an image of being successful through clever use of media. The truth of the matter is that he is a Putin puppet because the Russians own him due to the many loans they have given him and he follows the Putin playbook advocating the politics of eternity which is based on lies and looking at the present only, no future for anyone, wealth and power for his family and him, and we in the US are here only to make him and his cronies wealthy. I can only think that Republicans who support him do so because they want a piece of the action. They have to know what I am talking about. I say, vote them all out.
22
For a man who professed never to telegraph his intentions, President Trump has been singing like a bird ever since this summit was announced. Also, if one watched the body language of both leaders, it was pretty apparent that Trump seemed overly eager to shake hands with Kim at every opportunity and always made the first move to do so. Again, Kim smiled far less than Trump – it was embarrassing to watch a U.S. president almost fawning over the dictator.
Sorry Bret, even mentioning the Reagan-Gorbachev summit alongside the Trump-Kim ego trip is simply grotesque and insulting.
19
For once, I agree completely with every point Mr. Stephens makes. Most notably, the notion that Trump made all the concessions while Kim made none.
That signed joint declaration is a giant nothing burger: the USA cancelled joint maneuvers in the Korean Peninsula as well as (in effect) agreed to reduce troop activities in the region; NK agreed to work toward peace and denuclearization. No teeth in that agreement whatsoever. On the NK side, denuclearization is a 15 year process with demonstrable accomplishment already in place with the destruction of one development side. Nothing more need be done until someone points out nothing more was done. For the USA, immediate action took place. Meanwhile "currently at tense peace" is the decades long status.
And, the great negotiator has the gall to complain for years about the Iran deal, where Iran made many concessions and the USA only had to agree to repay a few billion dollars, dollars that were already Iran's own money from long ago? The word charlatan comes to mind.
140
For once, I agree completely with every point Mr. Stephens makes. Most notably, the notion that Trump made all the concessions while Kim made none.
As so many point out the day after, that signed joint declaration is a giant nothing burger: the USA cancelled joint maneuvers in the Korean Peninsula as well as (in effect) agreed to reduce troop activities in the region; NK agreed to work toward peace and denuclearization. No teeth in that agreement whatsoever. On the NK side, denuclearization is a 15 year process with demonstrable accomplishment already in place with the destruction of one development side. Nothing more need be done until someone points out nothing more was done. For the USA, immediate action took place. Meanwhile "currently at tense peace" is the decades long status.
And, the great negotiator has the gall to complain for years about the Iran deal, where Iran made many concessions and the USA only had to agree to repay a few billion dollars, dollars that were already Iran's own money from long ago? The word charlatan comes to mind.
16
The scariest aspect of Trump's visit with Kim is its political shiftiness, many voters might be stupid enough to think he had a deal with Putin all along and they would forgive him for collusion. He is in many a master of deception.
I hope I'm wrong but I know a few of his older generations supporters who think he is 'just amazing!', 'like Richard Nixon'. Need I say more?
Ohhh, this is excruciating! I'd take Reagan any day now.
Bill Evans, in Los Angeles
5
Your final sentence is a hoot!
32
Well I’m glad somebody on the right finally said it. Prepare for Fox vilification, my friend.
45
Reagan may have been ignorant of policy details but he had advisers that weren't. Trump is just ignorant. Reagan knew what he did not know. Trump doesn't.
11
Trump proclaimed a terrific relationship and very special bond with the despot Kim. Almost sounds like George W. Bush looking into Putin's eyes and seeing his soul. History repeats, but the question is ... are we at the tragedy or the farce phase?
20
Thank you. Well written. Much needed analysis.
10
Is there something about Trump that only loves countries who conduct cyber attacks on our country?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/26/north-korea-cyber-att...
Should Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Mexico, etc. step it up?
7
Russia should rejoin us in the G8, and Little Rocket Man is our new best ally. Seems very strange indeed, until one realizes that Trump is simply signing the USA up to join the “Axis of Evil “.
29
Things you can do as the anti Reagan.
Invade Canada instead of Grenada
Rebuild the Berlin wall and cede it to Russia
Abandon the former Warsaw Pact members.
Shoot someone in the street rather than get shot.
Treat China and Russia better than Great Brittan.
Curse the PM of Canada.
Dis all of your Allies
12
North Korea has been begging for a joint meeting with the United States for over forty-five years. Amazingly, Trump has granted their wish and thrown South Korea under the bus - and received nothing in return.
This is a total victory for Kim Jong Un!
26
Oh, Puleeeze! Can we talk about something else?
1
On one hand, Trump can be accused of giving Kim "legitimacy" by meeting with him with all the trappings of a summit. Kim and his family have long hungered for a world stage shared with the U.S., and Trump gave Kim that for nothing.
On the other hand, the world stage Kim shared was with Trump. A charlatan at best, and a petty tyrant at worst. This "summit" will play well in Pyongyang. The rest of the world saw two fools patting one another on the back. That's not really "legitimacy" in my book.
11
Right on, Brett- the shallow impulses that created failed businesses, fraudulent ‘university’ and bankruptcy are at play in Trump’s global showboating. He’s rude to friends because he doesn’t fear them and panders to dangerous thugs because he does.
Between his boarding school survivalism & Roy Cohn’s reptilian power plays- Trump has no secret savvy-what we’ve seen is what we’ll get: big boasts, empty claims.
9
I wonder if the Senate will sign off? Might be a challenge to get 2/3rds. If it doesn't, the attacks on those who vote against it will be 'Super Big...' I can imagine that this won't be ratified this year.
2
"Kim plans to be ruling North Korea when one of Chelsea Clinton’s kids is president"
That's when I stopped reading. Do you conservatives always have to take pot shots at the Clintons, even when the article is totally unrelated? Particularly their child and grandchilden.
11
Yeah, they have to. It's in the conservative bye-laws someplace.
Tiresome, isn't it?
2
Ronald Reagan, bad actor, bad President.
Donald Trump, bad business man, bad President.
Well qualified to be Republicans.
22
Donald Trump is not only the anti Reagan,he is anti our allies,anti America's interests and anti any dignified approach to the presidency.
11
This looks more like Plaza Redeux.
3
Trump next will ask ISIS , Hammas , Iran , Al-Qa'ida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) ...Al-Shabaab. ...
Boko Haram , Mexico and all the others if they want hotels and resorts and our worries will be over ! He really is a stable genius !
Why can’t he be like this with americans ?
12
The rot that this country is now wallowing in was first started by Ronald Reagan. After him, every time a Republican Administration has held power, this country has slowly slide further down the slippery slope to hatred, greed and selfishness. Party before country, self interest before national pride and doing the right things, that have always made this country a cut above all others.
The Republican Party has turned into a party of haters.
26
Dear Mr. Stephens, As a person of south Asian origin I am happy Mr. Trump is not like Reagan. No offense to people with mental disabilities, Mr. Reagan was not capable of even running a Banana stand. Mr.Trump has difussed a really bad situation so please give him some credit. Mr. Trump may be good according to some of you but at least he is not a war criminal like G.W.Bush etc.
2
You mean diffused a really tense situation that he, DJT, created? Is that the one you mean???
1
Hello MB,
I do agree it was partially created by DJT's comments and some by DRK's missile program and Nuclear testing. But US and DRK are talking and I take it as a good sign. Remember Reagan never talked to anybody and he was trigger happy. I am still reeling under the police action against Grenada, Calling Islamic fundamentalists Soldiers of God etc. I don't agree with current president but I am happy till he doesn't take us to wars.
I would put it this way: Ronald Reagan had a moral compass, Donald Trump doesn't.
7
"Machiavelli smiles from the grave."
Very true, very apt.
8
Brett, brilliant. But as we so devastatingly witnessed in 2016, no matter how brilliant the analysis of the Trump-induced psychosis may be, 63 MILLION voters nonetheless proved that all you have to do is give those voters a button-pushing, endlessly-repeated bumper sticker and they'll not only vote for you, they'll let you suck the blood from their veins.
You can be sure that the Trumpmeister and his acolytes at Fox and elsewhere will endlessly repeat how brilliant, brave, bold and fearless our Dear Leader was in WINNING this battle and how much all prior US leaders were LOSERS.
Weakness, Strength. Win, Lose. Us, Them. Safe, Danger. Evil, Good. These are the simplistic reductions that power-hungry despots have used for eons to get the fear-filled, simple-minded sheep to give those despots power.
31
Kim knows Trump is lazy; knows Trump thinks he's smart when he really operates fact-free. Kim is the opposite because he can be poisoned at any moment, so he works hard at being a despot. Kim had the pen used to sign the "non-deal" inspected by a stooge wearing latex gloves... priceless.
Trump giving Kim that video is the key to play Trump by Kim.
He sees that Trump wants him to buy into riches for his nation but like Stalin and every other dictator, Kim has no interest in that, just regime continuation. Trump always offers Big Cash, the Dream. So Kim strings Trump out pretending he's been co-opted too, since most of Trump's targets swallow the bait of endless riches. And Kim revives his regime economically all the while.
If I wasn't American, I'd be hoping for Kim to take this carnival barker to the woodshed. My Fellow Americans, our collective sloth and magical thinking earned this president. He is exactly who we are. Trump is as American as America. Own it.
80
But...but...but... Trump said Kim loves his people, he wants to take care of his people. Isn't that enough? Don't you believe him? He's really a kind, gentle soul, under that rough exterior. Big Don's got this, no need to fret...
15
Bret Baby,
I’m willing to give Reagan credit for toppling Communism...
But the idea that Ronnie or ANYONE had any sense BEFOREHAND THAT The Soviets were near collapse... is a stretch...and certainly not historical fact...
13
Well said. Remember that Trump is the rotting fruit under the GOP tree. He isn't the first to understand the red white and blue halo of a good tv rally. Reagan mastered the photo op. Patriotic chotzke nearly consumed him in many pictures. After that substance waited its turn in the closet while fabricated reality adjusted its crotch at the podium.
Trump doesn't give a bleep if this NK deal blows up. He'll dazzle the digital and cable punditry with a threat to evaporate Kim's toilet.
Don't forget, it's a GOP sponsored drama. They all have their fingers crossed that they just may get their own show!
5
The fact that conservatives are foaming at the mouth over this gives me hope.
6
I agree with the assessment that the agreement lacked any details and was therefore essentially a non-agreement. But that's better than the Iran deal where we gave away everything for Iranian promises and limited access to selected nuclear sites.
And I would give Kim all the meaningless photo ops he wants - maybe even a state dinner at the White House - but no relief on sanctions without verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. Hopefully John Bolton can keep Trump from making the mistakes of previous administrations.
3
It’s just mind-blowing how differently American conservatives view the Iran deal than basically everyone else on earth, save Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose views are utterly dependent on theirs. Probably the best we can expect with North Korea is a plan that will be largely indistinguishable from the one we had with Iran, but since Trump has already offered a major concession while getting nothing from Kim, I’m not optimistic.
60
The money we gave to Iran was their money - not ours. And the most intrusive oversight that we have ever implemented on a nuclear arsenal we have now in Iran. Trump won't and can't get anything anywhere near that with North Korea especially because of his pull out from the Iran deal.
70
Reagan and Trump had much in common.
They both used the idiotic Make America Great Again campaign slogans before proceeding to shred worker rights, women's rights, environmental safety while giving the rich giant raises.
Those were both fake Christians thrilled to pander to Christian Crusaders hellbent on installing a burning cross on the White House.
They both rode the wretched fumes of racism to the Oval Office; Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi at a white supremacist county fair while talking 'welfare queen' jive; the Birther-Liar needs no explanation.
And both committed treason with a foreign country to get elected in the first place.
Trump's campaign was a Club Med for Kremlin operatives to ensure that Hillary Hatred received a steady daily insulin drip of 'emails' to ensure Daycare Donnie's election.
And Abolhassan Banisadr, the former President of Iran, has stated "that the Reagan campaign struck a deal with Tehran to delay the release of the hostages in 1980", and "by October 1980, many in Iran's ruling circles were openly discussing the fact that a deal had been made between the Reagan campaign team and some Iranian religious leaders in which the hostages' release would be delayed until after the election so as to prevent President Carter's re-election."
The 52 hostages were conveniently released a few minutes after Reagan's inauguration.
Reagan was a B-movie actor; Trump a cheap reality TV actor.
Two treasonous peas in a pod.
528
Exactly! I could not agree more. Reagan was the president that initiated the Fall of the American Empire. Trump has accelerated the process by a few decades. The Chinese Xi Dynasty is poised in the wings. How long until the US dollar is replaced by the Yuan.
14
Socrates, I'd stick in another comparison. They were both old men.
According to a friend who is an emeritus professor of neurology, it takes about 20 years before a brain affected by Alzheimer’s shows severe symptoms. In the meantime, the organ compensates in spite of being compromised. Reagan died of the disease, and although he wasn't diagnosed while in office his speech patterns indicated mental decline while he was still president. Trump has a family history, and his erratic and often hostile behavior is a big red flag. As for his speech patterns, does Twitter count?
Point being, when nuclear weapons are an issue competence should be as well. The Republicans want to leave this up to their personal god, who in this case is acting through a couple of weird or star-struck physicians. But whether or not you agree with Trump politically, that’s not good enough when the stakes are this high.
3
As usual Socrates, spot on!
1
This is smoke, looking for cover. Facts, actions, and their implications show Trump sold out to China on 3 points: the US will pick up economic support for North Korea and not block its admission to the world's multi-national economies. (This also opens North Korea as a proxy and new back door for relading US intellectual property and tech secrets.) The US will reduce it military footprint in SE Asia, including troop readiness. Trump's trade ire and angst will turn on its allies (who Trump thinks are freeloaders.) We suddenly hear about Canada diary and European cars (millions!); after a week of meeting with China, nothing on China steel, its deficit.
The stimulus for these major changes of direction in US geo-military and economic policy was the $500 million cross-channeled upfront that put Trump's Malaysian resort in the middle of an international upgrade. Trump signaled immediately in turn, rushed to save China jobs, rescuing China's spyware consumer firm XTE for a billion in fines, and opening the US to sweeps of data through its spyware.
In the streets, when events are confusing and clarity is demanded, 2 questions are asked: Who got paid? And who got blessed? Think through the story and timelines (China supplying Kim a US-made luxury plane!), the back and forth as strategic deflection; focus less on the event and review the process, the chain of decisions. Then ask: Who are the Blessed?
96
Take to the streets and protest 60's style.
1
Probably the most insightful take I've seen on this whole Gong Show of an arms negotiation. Despots like Kim are only interested in Who's In Charge, not What They're In Charge Of. Muammar Gaddafi's final moments are probably his cell phone wallpaper.
And once again - - what is Japan supposed to do about this? Trump has left our strongest east asian ally out in the cold by suspending the military exercises, and Kim is not shy about launching nuclear-capable missiles over the only country that has ever been attacked by a nuclear weapon. Are we supposed to be surpised when Japan announces its own nuclear deterrent?
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Thank you Bret...rarely do we see eye to eye but on this one I agree with you 100%
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Trump's little show at the G7 seemed too cleverly staged for him to have directed it all by himself. I think he had some help from a certain Russian. The same Russian that will be all too happy to have the US military off of his little neighbor's door step, as will China as they conduct their aggressive maneuvers in the China Sea. Kim benefits also. He gets to join the nuclear dictator club and South Korea is surrounded by them, with Japan as the only nearby friendly. Putin must be thrilled.
While everyone is once again engaged in yet another outrageous spectacle brought to you by the apprentice president, Spec. Counsel Mueller is quietly going about his job, and the free nations of the world cross their fingers.
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One television reporter in Seoul said people were giddy and hopeful. I doubt that will last when they realize they now face the huge North Korean military with an unreliable partner who appears to be unilaterally backing away from it’s defense commitment.
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Your paeans to Ronald Reagan notwithstanding, it must certainly come as no surprise, Mr. Stephens, that this president, the grudging darling of the American Right, was completely out of his depth in Singapore.
He proved to all the world that the carefully constructed legend that’s his very own creation was never what he told us it was. To the easily-taken in, the excitement and promise of unending thrills were the poison that he distilled into an intoxicating beverage of self-delusion which his audience shared.
The North Korean monster smiled and glad-handed Donald Trump and guided him through his paces as surely as a man walks his dog, the leash long or short as needed, just enough to give the dog a sense of feeling that it’s moving about on its on volition. Kim was in total and complete control. For one thing, Kim reads and digests briefings and reports. He may eschew advice—but unlike his “unprepared” American opposite—he will listen. Trump is much too taken with himself.
You are on record, Mr. Stephens, as cheering the death of the Iran nuclear agreement. You found it unworkable and unverifiable. You excoriated President Obama for not forcing the ayatollahs to root out their proxies in other countries, visiting terror and political calamity in countries not their own, the human rights abuses of Syrians, for example, a terrible cost.
You apparently forgot, in your necessity to criticize Mr. Obama, that Trump couldn’t be bothered with details.
Kim won. Trump lost.
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The fiasco in Singapore actually reminded me of another Reagan summit, the Rejkjavik Summit of 1986. That summit was held with a very limited number of advisers and it was held in the shadow of the Iran-Contra Affair that threatened to bring down the Reagan Administration. At the summit both leaders quickly fell into talk about eliminating all ballistic missiles. As Reagan's aids bit their lips they saw how close the USSR was to having the US give up it's one military advantage, viz. it's nuclear triad, and thus leave itself at a severe disadvantage to the Soviet conventional forces. Fortunately, a dispute over the eventually meaningless SDI program led to the break off of the talks. I knew personnel at the Rand Corporation and they had the first inclination that possibly Reagan was headed for dementia. They called the whole thing "WreckHavoc". None the less the sense that there was some progress did save Reagan from the impeachment he so richly earned by running an illegal war against the Bolland Act that prohibited the arming of military forces in Nicaragua as well as a battery of laws prohibiting the sales of hand held missiles to Iran. Now the analogy, when talk of this summit began there was discussion of North Korean denuclearization, now we are talking about removing American troops and denuclearizing the entire peninsula, thus leaving the North with a 5-1 advantage in conventional forces. Reagan may have had dementia to blame but for Trump its all narcissism.
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I wouldn’t count out the beginnings of dementia either, especially if you compare Trump’s statements of a couple of decades ago with his current statements. He had some looney ideas then but he was much more articulate.
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For now, however, it’s hard to see what the Singapore summit has achieved other than to betray America’s allies, our belief in human rights, our history of geopolitical sobriety and our reliance on common sense. For what?
Wow! This says it all.
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Windrip, I think you let out "giving away all the advantage the US had to the countries enemies, for free"
The Art of the Deal - give in without getting anything in return - see TPP and NK "deal"
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Keep up the great work Bret. Your sober and accurate analysis of everything Trump should be mandatory reading for every Trump supporter.
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For Sale: one (1) naked emperor who thinks he's done something that no President could do. As is.
Mr Stephens has proven that, without any doubt,
Trump has dug the DRIEST hole of watershed moments.
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There was a handshake, a photo op, a secret short meeting, and then a piece of paper waved about with hyperbolic adjectives that followed.
There were no specifics, no inspections and no change in the human rights being abused or executions stopping. There was no mention at all (here as well) about China. (considering they hold all the power via their propping up of the country by supplying them with everything for daily life)
Look, I want peace and if it is achieved somehow and someway with this President and that dictator, then I might feel a lit bit safer. I will give them their due.
It still does not cancel out all of the atrocities committed so far, and all that are continuing on.
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Totally agree. Another point; Trump is all about Trump. Trump wanted the summit to prove he is a stable genius who understands how to create world peace, and it is easy. Trump is all about personal relationships with other leaders who he thinks can manage and he then can take advantage of them. He thinks he is the smartest man in the room. Trump has a short attention span. He believes in bi-lateral deals, believing he does not need or want allies. He believes what works best is keeping everyone fighting everyone else, whether it is in the White House, the G7, the Congress or the world at large. Set them upon each other and see who wins. Being all about image, real content or results are irrelevant. Now that he has solved the Korean issue, Trump can return home and go back to his campaign-style rallies and tweets.
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Absolutely, I agree with you and I am not a Republican.You don't mention that Reagan had the courage to go to Berlin in June 1987 and challenge Mr Gorbachev to "tear down this wall". He had negotiated with Mr.Gorbachev and had a respectful relationship and yet he chose to go to Berlin and decry his human rights abuses.Mr.Trump goes for handshakes,smiles and chummy photo-ops.
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"I’d be happy to be proved wrong. I would be thrilled to learn that Kim is a farsighted reformer masquerading, out of desperate necessity, as a thug and a swindler." The Leader of the Republican Party's making the "ultimate deal" with Kim Jong Un must provoke comparisons not with Gorbachev and Reagan but with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 - in todays' case for Trump's domestic political purposes. I'd be happy to be proved wrong. I'd be thrilled to learn that Trump is a farsighted statesman masquerading, out of a sense of mischief and irony, as a thug and a swindler. I wish his Republican Party enablers would be similarly thrilled.
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I really enjoy Bret Stephens - although I must admit I disagreed with him when he supported Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (why is the Iran deal so bad with verification a core tenet of the agreement but this one so good in Trump's twisted logic- without any firm commitment to denuclearize on the part of North Korea, never mind the verification of such?). This "deal" is so laughable on so many levels I am not even sure where to begin. This Presidency is such a farce - the only hope for the world's salvation right now appears to be Bob Mueller.
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The important difference isn’t between Reagan and Trump, it’s between Gorbachev and Kim. The idea that we should trust Trumps judgment that Kim wants peace, denuclearization and cash is absurd in light of his successful production of nukes, his continuing development of long range missiles, his feeding his uncle alive to dogs and perpetuating a third generation of gulag prisoners.
If Kim wanted to be Gorbachev he’d have reformed already. Gorby didn’t need a summit.
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What Trump really understood was the part about wanting cash. They have that in common.
2
Thanks for the perspective. I too hope that we can get North Korea to give up their weapons but why would they when they have already gotten a lot of what they wanted from trump without giving anything in return.
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Besides, Trump's word on anything is worthless. If he treats our oldest and closest ally like trash, why would anyone expect anything different from him with them? Kim may be brutal, but he isn't stupid. For that, we have Trump.
1
Reagan learned what nuclear weapons could do and then decided that he wanted them gone, he did not buy into MAD. Gorbachev came to the conclusion that unless the Cold War was ended, the U.S.S.R. would not survive, and he was willing to get rid of nuclear weapons to bring about that end. Reagan was not well informed about the details but he knew what he wanted and it was no more nuclear sword of Damocles over the world.
Trump does not really have any strong preferences beyond looking like the big winner, and to have the attention of all. He wants to show a deal with Kim, he dumps the conventional forces readiness activities to make Kim happy, without considering the actual consequences.
Kim is a cool customer, cold in fact, he killed people with who he had been close to consolidate his power. He demands of Trump what China wants and he wants, and Trump gives it to him, without any negotiating.
This interaction has nothing in common with Reagan and Gorbachev. Different times, different people, different goals.
13
About abandoning joint military exercises by the U.S./ROK military. "War games" are what infantry, airmen and sailors "play" to learn and sharpen their skills, to deal with the unexpected and to learn how to carry out jointly produced plans, among many other things. They're also extremely useful to coalition allies speaking different languages, using different equipment and employing variant tactics. Would it surprise you to learn that U.S. and ROK forces carried out NO joint military exercises before the N. Koreans swept over the 38th parallel in 1950 and drove the S. Korean coalition all the way to the Pusan perimeter, coming within an eyelash of destroying the U.S. forces there, to say nothing of the ROK army? War games are an extension of the principle of preparedness, in this case against the 4th largest army in the world, larger even than the Russian Federation's. To stop joint training and adopt a "wait and see" posture is to hand the initiative to that formidable army. Trump, in his ignorance, seems ready to hand that initiative Kim Jong-un, and expects to be applauded for it.
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My hope is that Trump’s generals will withhold his military parade if he doesn’t restore preparedness exercises.
1
Astute comment, CPMariner, and no surprise that Trump wouldn't see the value of anything resembling training and experience.
Reagan was an actor, Trump a reality TV star. Both men knew how to manipulate viewers, if not really shape world affairs. It's all about drama.
24
The Iran deal was so terrible that Trump reneged. It was over 100 pages and full of details on verification.
Trump declares KJU to be trustworthy and the agreement, all of one page save for the ginormous signatures, is historic. No specifics on what will be done, and nothing on verification.
The man really knows how to put a deal together!
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It does not matter what was or was not accomplished for real in Singapore, because it will be presented to the people who want to believe as American Greatness Restored. Downsides will be Obama's fault. Or crooked Hillary's. Or the failing NYT or the witch hunt. Take you pick, it doesn't matter.
Trump doesn't have to win; he doesn't need to have even an inkling about the havoc he leaves swirling like the piles of rubble after an F5. He just has to declare himself a winner.
So in that light, the summit is a success. If it leaves the world in greater or lesser stability, so what? It's the midterms that matter, and nothing else.
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"It's the midterms that matter, and nothing else." The midterms will not impact Trump in any substantial way. Hence, "Whats the problem?" is still how the White House is run.
4
Your moment of clarity is greatly appreciated.
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" my touch, my feel ". Here's a collective GROSS, from the Women of America. Seriously.
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Good to know I wasn't the only one cringing when trump talks about his touch - I think of his fat fingers grabbing at women breasts and thinking he can hurt and assault women because he is famous and then brag about it like he is some vile frat boy.
14
Also reminiscent of Bush's proclaiming that he knew Putin was a good man. "I feel it in my guy, he's a good man."
2
This is just another Reality Show, loyalty rally and ego fest for Him. The Trumps have already amassed enough Cash to last for decades. That's the entire point of his Campaign and Regime. All the ready is just for entertainment, and to spew his spite and ignorance. Seriously.
55
Devastatingly succinct analysis. I hold a lot of contempt for Reagan and the path he started this country down, but I'd trade Trump for him in a heartbeat
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I wouldn't.
Simply because unlike Reagan, I doubt Trump will be idolized 10 years from now as a beacon of conservative ideology. It's far more likely he'll go down the path of Bush.
In terms of policies and personality, I'd definitely prefer Reagan. But Trump is more likely to create a Democratic revolution, rather than a conservative Republican revolution. The damage he does, I feel, will be negated by the increased support he creates towards Democrats and Democratic policy in the future.
Reagan was far better at selling conservative narratives and policy. Trump isn't so fortunate.
2
Yeah, now we’re acting like battered spouses who can’t leave til the kids are grown.
1
I'll take Trump over the similarly-but-differently evil Reagan. Reagan was smart enough to try to cover his tracks and wipe away his fingerprints, to shift blame onto underlings, etc. With Trump, the evil is mostly right out in the open.
I'm no fan of Reagan and his brand of conservatism which has caused a generation of damage to our country. However he looks like a benevolent genius when compared with Trump. I don't understand why the GOP has fallen in lock step with Trump's march to oblivion. I deeply hope that the short term damage our country is facing from Trump's regime will be made up by the destruction of the corrupt GOP/NRA/Russia combine that is inevitable.
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The gutting of unions, workers' benefits, job security and pensions, and the rise of contingent low-paid labor conditions, ensured damage from the Reagan years that will extend far beyond a generation.
14
The GOP routinely turns out the very worse of men for its leaders. It is just who they are. Trump is the epitome of what they have been producing for decades.
5
I guess in 25 years Trump will seem, in retrospect, to be a benevolent genius!
Oh, Mr. Stephens, thank you for your analyses which have been my thoughts exactly. To read your words, you a Republican and I a Democrat, is a testimony to how there can be a meeting of the minds in spite of a most polarized nation. Your juxtaposing the characters of Reagan/Gorbachev with Trump/Kim is the crux of this present paradigm. I will not repeat what you so thoroughly critiqued. But I do want to vent my personal feelings re this anti-climatic "summit." I am still reeling from Trump's treatment of our closest allies, our neighbors and friends, at the G-7 meeting. I am ashamed and embarrassed for my country. Simultaneously, as I watched the touchy-feeling gestures of this president and smiles rather than sneers in Singapore, I was repulsed. Unlike Gorbachev, Kim is a murderer, pure and simple, and among the worst of dictators of recent times who has relentlessly abused, exploited, and violated the universal code of human rights. Unlike Reagan, I believe that peace and stability of the world order is not Trump's sole purpose. He wants the prize..whether it be the Nobel or popularity ratings. And finally our nation should never both figuratively and literally hang our flag in such a way that it abuts the North Korean one.
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Trump may have his eye on the Nobel Peace prize even as he disdains all the intellectual and humanitarian pursuits that the Nobel committee rewards, but I still have faith that the committee won't let him come anywhere near its short list. Even if I don't have faith in much else.
Me too and Amen!
Bret Stephens, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez and Chuck Schumer were all opposed to the Obama Iran nuclear deal. And thus they have no credibility on the Trump North Korea nuclear "steal".
Israel is the primary nuclear weapons ethnic sectarian supremacist rogue nation state. Followed by India and Pakistan.
While the 2.3 million Americans in prison are 25 % of the world's prisoners with 5 % of humanity. And 40 % are black like Ben Carson. Even though only 13% of Americans are black. Blacks are persecuted for acting like they are white.
America is allied with the corrupt inhumane ethnic sectarian supremacist royal autocrats in Saudi Arabia. America is allied with the military dictatorship in Egypt. Mr. Kim is no worse than they are.
1
The most optimistic take on the meeting between Trump and Kim is that Trump was forced into this rapprochement with Kim because North Korea had nuclear weapons, by some estimates as many as sixty.
But unlike Reagan and Gorbachev who were rational actors(nobody was accusing Gorby of sending people to gulags, forced starvation or tearing apart an uncle with an anti aircraft weapons like Kim has done) the spectacle of Trum and Kim in Singapore leads to greater speculation about their motives.
But few would dispute that Trump was forced into negotiations with North Korea because of Kim’s ability to point missiles at the U.S., South Korea and Japan sooner rather than later.
The optimistic view is that deterrence is a fact that we’ve come to and talking, even in the bizarre meeting just held, is preferable to the diatribe between the countries just six months ago,
10
"But few would dispute that Trump was forced into negotiations with North Korea because of Kim’s ability to point missiles at the U.S., "
And Kim was forced into the summit because the sanctions were starving Kim's programs, supplies, and people. We paid for Kim's luxury vacation in Singapore. He came to the summit as a beggar with hat in hand; he left with more rewards than he (or we) ever imagined.
Perhaps Trump will be building another Trump Tower hotel in North Korea? Part of the Deal...
35
So Iran should get nuclear weapons in order to get the North Korean treatment from America.
Indeed, Iran should seek the nuclear weapons rogue nations status of Israel, India and Pakistan.
1
@Lj
Trump has spent a third of his time in office vacationing and playing golf. While counting on hiding from the American people his profitable occupation of the Oval Office of the White House in his personal and family income tax returns and business records.
Reagan's diplomatic skills didn't make the world safer; while the 'great communicator' did a lot of sloganeering and used big words, the results were non-existent.
Maybe Trump's' unconventional' style will do better.
Whatever works, I say.
7
Against the advice from those who would become known as neocons, Reagan correctly saw Gorbachev as the real deal where the Soviets were concerned. Unlike any other Soviet leader before, he realized he could, in Margaret Thatcher's words, "do business with Mr. Gorbachev." I was not and am still not any fan of Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless, any reasonable person whould give the Gipper props for this accomplishment that did indeed make the world safer. As for Trump's "style", and with respect, your mouth to God's ear.
31
I wasn't a great fan of Reagan but his dealings with Russia were right on.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was very much existent! It didn't "end the Cold War" as Reagan supporters like to say, but it was an important arms control treaty.
It’s The Gipper vs. The Groper. Reagan gained public attention from being a film and TV actor. He had been the president of the Screen Actors’ Guild, Governor of California and long-time politician able to build coalitions. Many believed he was dangerous, a loose cannon who would plunge the world into war. Trump’s preparation was a little different; his three marriages, bankruptcies, publicity seeker, creator of glitter, developer of racist conspiracies, the garish New York deal maker, and TV bad boss. As president Reagan had doctrine, he sought advice and coalitions and had a vision of where he wanted to move the nation and the world. Trump?
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Reagan's casting couch was a way-station for actresses in trouble for subscribing to left-wing publications when McCarthyism paralyzed Washington. He could get them cleared.
Right on the money, DO5.
"He has a second rate mind, but a first rate temperament". Felix Frankfurter on Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Reagan was in the same category. Trump has a second rate mind and a third rate temperament.
2
Bret Stephens has nailed it. First Chapter from the Dictator's Playbook: Never confuse show (the public stance ) with substance (the private facts). Trump with his reality TV mentality is far more interested in the former while men like Kim and Putin know that, given enough pomp and circumstance, men like Trump can be played for all it is worth. In typical fashion, Trump wanted to distinguish himself from his predecessors with a very public meeting with his Korean counterpart. This was to be the difference maker as if somehow his Trumpian touch was all it took. Kim is no fool. He saw how Trump treated his supposed friends at the G7. Easy conclusion: Forget friendship - simply tell Trump what he wants to hear and deliver only the amount you don't need. The political equivalent of giving away snow in the winter time.
122
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the real President of the United States. Along with his Vice President Xi Jinping.
2
In one week Trump has presided over two summits that will be studied for decades as the worst examples of presidential diplomacy: how to betray allies and cave to adversaries. It is of a piece with the reneging on TPP and climate change and consistent with Trump's explicit abandonment at the G7 of the U.S. commitment to the international rules of order created largely by the U.S. after WW Two. Trump has also violated any commitment to human rights by embracing the worst offender. He has subordinated himself slavishly to Putin. Will any Republican legislator--not leaving office--stand up to Trump and defend the values of Eisenhower, Reagan, and other pre-Trump Republicans?
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No Republican who wishes to remain in power will stand up. There are no profiles in courage - even among those leaving office such as Paul Ryan
2
Also please recall that Trump cancelled the Iran agreement which was a marked success. It got rid of almost all of Iran's nuclear stockpiles and capabilities. It actually did make the world significantly safer.
The Iran agreement involved a little bit of Iranian dishonesty which all parties including the United States were aware of but agreed to overlook. That could and perhaps should have been addressed now, but that minor shortcoming was not an adequate reason for cancelling the agreement. The justification was the Trump Republican racist vendetta against President Obama's legacy one part of which being the very good Iran agreement.
Edward Bash wrote:
"In one week Trump has presided over two summits that will be studied for decades as the worst examples of presidential diplomacy: how to betray allies and cave to adversaries. It is of a piece with the reneging on TPP and climate change and consistent with Trump's explicit abandonment at the G7 of the U.S. commitment to the international rules of order created largely by the U.S. after WW Two. Trump has also violated any commitment to human rights by embracing the worst offender. He has subordinated himself slavishly to Putin. Will any Republican legislator--not leaving office--stand up to Trump and defend the values of Eisenhower, Reagan, and other pre-Trump Republicans?"
2
"Will any Republican legislator--not leaving office--stand up to Trump and defend the values of Eisenhower, Reagan, and other pre-Trump Republicans?"
No.
2
Reagan never promised Gorbachov wealth, security for him and his regime for Negotiating nuclear weapons reduction.
Reagan had a Secretary of State in Schultz who was very experienced and relied on a professional and deep foreign service to deal with the details of diplomacy.
Trump is essentially running a one man reality show that doesn't rely on foreign service to do the hard work of diplomacy.
Trump has sold the US population that he, through the force of his will has brought maximum pressure that has brought North Korea to the table. North Korea on the other hand believes that high capacity Nuclear weapons and ICBM's tested while Trump took over the White House believes that is why the US is at the table.
After round one Maximum pressure is gone, nuclear weapons and ICBM's aren't gone. The US coalitions of allies, built up since 1945 is in taters. Restarting maximum pressure will be a very difficult task.
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Trump did not convince and sell "the US population".
Trump sold the 63 million Americans who voted for him including 58% of white voters made up of 62% of white men and 54 % of white women.
Trump did not sell the 66 million Americans who voted for Clinton including 95% of black voters made up of 92% of black men and 98 % of black women.
Trump has made China and Russia great again.
2