If Trump Meets Kim, He Should Do It the Right Way

If Trump Meets Kim, He Should Do It the Right Way

Trump’s critics fail to note that he would only meet Kim “under the right circumstances.”

President Trump has said a lot of questionable, unconventional—some would say borderline crazy—things over the first three months of his presidency. He’s hit America’s European allies hard on their sluggish defense spending (it’s about time), going to so far as to hint that the United States may no longer be there when the going gets tough. He’s blasted Saudi Arabia as a weakling that would have been taken over by radical jihadists were it not for the protection that the United States provides the royal family. And Trump has had a tendency to say nice things about authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, praise that the human-rights community finds nauseating.

But none of these statements have come close to his utterance to Bloomberg last week that he would consider meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un directly—a man commonly given the privilege of being considered the most despicable human being on the face of the earth. “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him [Kim], I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump told Bloomberg when asked about the prospect of a meeting. “If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”

It’s these kind of comments that cause high blood pressure in Washington, a town still trying to determine what Donald Trump, a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, is all about. Sen. John McCain flatly stated, “I don’t understand it, and I don’t think that the president appreciates the fact that when he says things like that, it helps the credibility and prestige of this really outrageous strongman.” Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright wasn’t happy that Trump used the word “honored” and “Kim” in the same sentence. And former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton thinks a Trump-Kim sit down would be an awful idea of epic proportions.

But what people seem to be missing or are choosing to ignore is Trump’s qualifier: “under the right circumstances.” This suggests that Trump understands that flying Air Force One to Pyongyang or inviting Kim Jong-un to the White House, without any warning or context whatsoever, in the current environment would be a public-relations disaster. It also would be highly unlikely that the meeting between the two would result in anything tangible.

It would be foolish, however, to knock down any possibility of a meeting with Kim in the future. Dangling a photo opportunity with the most powerful man on the planet is an enormous carrot that Washington can offer, particularly if a negotiation is already ongoing. Getting the president in a room to hash out the final details may be just what a bogged-down negotiating process needs to proceed to a good result. The president of the United States deserves as much flexibility as possible to make agreements for the benefit of the American people.

So if President Trump is genuine in his readiness to share a meal with the world’s worst tyrant, he needs to be smart. A Trump-Kim summit should only happen under these three conditions:

1. All Americans are released from North Korean custody.

Pyongyang has had a habit over the last decade of snatching Americans who are studying or traveling in North Korea, charging them with conspiring to overthrow the state, sentencing them to hard labor, and only releasing them if a high-profile American flies into the capital and presses the issue. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have each taken a plane to Pyongyang at some point in their careers in order to win the freedom of imprisoned Americans—in Clinton’s case, he had to endure the humiliating experience of posing stoically with the late Kim Jong-il for the entire world to see. But eventually, the Americans were returned to American custody and flown back home.

Over the last two weeks, the North Koreans have arrested two Korean American professors on the basis of being a danger to the Kim dynasty. These arrests bring the total of Americans in North Korean detention to four, all of whom have either already been or will soon be sentenced to hard labor. It would be wholly inappropriate for President Trump to meet with Kim when four fellow Americans are behind bars under terrible conditions, based on charges that haven’t been proven in an impartial court of law. Imagine the optics if Trump concluded a meeting with Kim without getting those Americans back: it would be a would be a direct refutation of Trump’s deal-making persona and an international embarrassment for the entire country. Best to draw a line in the sand.

2. Pyongyang’s WMD programs must be frozen.

If the overall U.S. policy objective is to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, we are a long, long, long way off from reaching that point. The Kim regime has demonstrated zero interest in negotiating away its nuclear capability; nor is it especially inclined to stop testing the ballistic missiles that it hopes will one day reach the U.S. mainland. Just as Washington views joint U.S.-South Korean military drills as an instrumental aspect of their defense relationship, Pyongyang considers ballistic-missile testing to be a message of resolve heard around the world.

For President Trump to discuss the nuts and bolts of nuclear physics with Kim Jong-un in this scenario would be a waste of time, with everything to lose and very little to gain. President Bill Clinton only thought about making a trip to Pyongyang when Kim Jong-il agreed to place a moratorium on missile testing and a possible agreement was within reasonable reach. This should be the Trump standard as well: no meetings, no phone calls, no contact whatsoever unless and until some kind of diplomatic process is underway with the North Koreans and Pyongyang has conceded to very substantial good-faith measures—a moratorium on the entire missile program, a freeze on all nuclear tests, a suspension of plutonium and uranium production, a halt to the export of WMD-related material, and the acceptance of IAEA inspectors to verify that Pyongyang is actually doing what it says it’s doing. If Kim wants communication with Trump, he’ll need to show some maturity.

3. Deal with the politics in Washington early.

Passing sanctions on North Korea is a time-honored tradition in Washington. It’s pretty much the only thing that conservative Republicans from the South and liberal Democrats from the California coast can agree on: North Korea is a direct national-security threat to the United States, and it needs to be stopped before it’s too late. Who can argue with that?

Indeed, just last week, the House of Representatives passed another North Korea sanctions bill with only one dissenting vote, a sign if there ever was one that a future Trump-Kim meeting would be even more politically perilous terrain to walk on than President Barack Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran.

As commander in chief, Trump has the power to set the tone of and manage U.S. foreign policy. This, however, doesn’t mean that the legislative branch shouldn’t be consulted or briefed about the policy. Bringing key members of Congress, whether Republicans or Democrats, on board and attaining their support at the earliest possible opportunity is essential if Trump is to emerge from a conference with Kim without being killed politically in the process. During the Iran negotiations, President Obama made the mistake of focusing his congressional strategy only on Democrats, leaving the entire Republican Party on the sidelines, and all but daring the GOP to uniformly oppose the Iran nuclear agreement when it was brought to the Congress for review—which they did. Trump can’t afford to plunge headfirst into direct diplomacy with a rogue regime without at least some bipartisan congressional support. Never underestimate Congress’s ability to foil an agenda.

A Donald Trump-Kim Jong-un meeting at the White House? Never say never. But a lot has to happen between now and then before the two can pose next to each other for a photo.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.

Image: Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang. Flickr/Creative Commons/@fljckr