Trump was brave to leave North Korea empty-handed
He came he saw, he left empty-handed.
For the self-proclaimed consummate deal-maker that is President Donald Trump, it would not be an understatement to say that last week’s second summit with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un on North Korea’s prospective denuclearisation did not go quite according to plan.
Trump’s gamble had been that his personal rapport with Kim, which was on public display throughout proceedings – most obviously during a joint press conference where the “odd couple” of international diplomacy showed more solidarity with each other than with the press hacks assailing them – could overcome North Korea’s famous reluctance to give up its nuclear weapons programme.
Trump evidently felt that North Korea’s precarious economic situation, which had been the biggest single factor pushing Kim to meet him in the first place, would force his counterpart’s hand, and that the prospect of a Nobel Peace Prize and international stardom might yet pull him into compliance.
Even the choice of summit country, nominally Communist Vietnam, was turned into an opportunity to show Kim that his regime would not be threatened by an economic revolution that brought prosperity to people without removing one-party rule.
Trump was proved spectacularly wrong. Kim rejected the deal on the table, instead demanding full sanctions relief in exchange for full denuclearisation.
Despite this display of North Korean gamesmanship, the US President was not wrong to walk away from the table. In fact, not only was he right, but he demonstrated considerable bravery in so doing.
Trump had expended significant international political capital in pursuing the North Koreans, the eyes of the world were trained upon him with his audacious gambit, and he could have used the buzz from a historic deal to provide some cover against the domestic allegations being made about him.
Yet he chose not to take the easy option. He stood his ground, and made it clear in a parlance that we have become rather familiar with in recent times in these quarters that no deal was better than a bad deal.
In so doing, he was able to demonstrate the best characteristics of true leadership during his presidential tenure so far, at one of its most disappointing moments.
The recriminations have of course come thick and fast from political opponents at home and abroad. But contrast Trump’s behaviour with that of his much-vaunted predecessor Barack Obama at the time of the Iran nuclear deal, and a different picture emerges.
Obama was so desperate to make a deal at any price that he was prepared to pay every price in order to achieve it.
He ended up browbeating his European partners into agreeing a deal that was not permanent, allowed the Iranians considerable latitude over what facilities could be inspected and when, and did not include a ban on development or testing of the ballistic missiles necessary to deliver nuclear payloads.
It also paid the Iranians handsomely for the privilege of securing a temporary cessation to their illegal enrichment process.
The US lost all leverage with Iran at precisely the time that the theocratic regime was on its knees economically, because Obama couldn’t stomach the idea of aborting a process he had started.
As Trump has shown, sometimes the art of the deal is to walk away when conditions for that deal are not optimal, and to live to fight another day when the deal you actually want is able to be reached.
What that day will look like when it comes to North Korea remains to be seen.
Satellite images this week appear to show that the North Korean response is to return to a more belligerent stance: a portion of a facility previously used to test long-range missile engines is being rebuilt, having been mothballed as a result of the negotiation process.
Nobody, not least North Korea’s nervous neighbouring countries, wants to see a return to the “Little Rocket Man” school of diplomacy, with its underlying threat of nuclear war.
The US will likely try to wait out North Korea’s display of rebelliousness in the knowledge that behind everything lies the disaster zone that is the country’s economy.
Trump’s idea that economics determines politics may not have borne fruit on this occasion, but the economic noose around the Kim regime’s neck will grow ever tighter without a deal lifting sanctions.
Kim may have escaped this round, but years of bare subsistence await unless he changes his mind.
While the North Korean leadership does not place any value on the quality of life of its citizens, having now developed a taste for the international high life, it may yet come to rue being forced back into poverty and isolation.
Perhaps Trump’s lasting contribution through his unorthodox diplomacy to date will therefore have been to destroy the mystique around the world’s last “hermit kingdom”, making it just that bit more likely that the next iteration of discussions will actually succeed.