March 9, 2018
Jeffrey Lewis
The following is an excerpt of an article published in Foreign Policy.
It’s like Richard Nixon going to China, but if Nixon were a moron.
By now, you’ve heard that Donald Trump is meeting with Kim Jong Un by May. You’ve probably also seen the White House walking it back. And then, anonymously, walking it forward again. Things are crazy. Let’s try to sort through it all.
North Korea has been desperate for a state-visit from a sitting U.S. president since at least the Clinton administration. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has said that the United States has not made any concessions, but let’s be clear: THE MEETING IS THE CONCESSION.
Although President Trump seems to be under the impression that the meeting would be to discuss the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the North Koreans haven’t said anything remotely like that.
In fact, all we have from the North Koreans is the secondhand account of a South Korean diplomat of his boozy dinner with Kim Jong Un and an email sent by the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations to Anna Fifield at the Washington Post.
What Kim said, according to the South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong, was pretty thin gruel: that North Korea would not need nuclear weapons if “military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed.” The email to Fifield didn’t seem to mention it at all, merely offering to explain North Korea’s position to the United States.
Continue reading at Foreign Policy.
