IS DONALD TRUMP THE WORST EVER PRESIDENTIAL DEAL-MAKER?

…The “Dynamic-Duo” of Kim & Trump

There is no definition for what “denuclearization” actually means….?

Once again, our president could have proven the media wrong with the issues regarding both Iran and North Korea.  But due to comments by his National Security Adviser, John Bolton, and the VP, Mike Pence, plus the president’s inability to deal with the complex issue of international affairs, everything could still go into the toilet before the end of Trump’s first term.

Both the VP and John Bolton went on national TV and used the Kaddafi / Libya issue of giving up their nuclear capability as being what was needed with North Korea. 

Needless to say, if North Korea gave up their nuclear weapons, then North Korea, like Libya, would become just an irrelevant, third world nation.  Those comments from Bolton and Pence caused a serious backlash from key individuals in North Korea, including the leader, Kim Jong Un.

This caused the president to go from being a so called “would-be Nobel Peace Prize winner” to being what we usually see him as: the “Commander in Chief of total chaos”.

The reality is that the need for a full understanding of international affairs is crucial, and even though President Obama had warned the incoming president that North Korea and its growing nuclear program could no longer be ignored. It was also evident, that Obama’s policy for checking Iran’s pursuit of more influence in the Middle East was seriously failing. That is because even though Tehran was respecting the letter of the 2015 nuclear program, it had also doubled down on supporting the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, while exploiting the giant loophole in the nuclear pact for still pursuing their development of long-range missiles.

For a while, it looked like Trump’s out-spoken approach might produce good results. Being afraid that the US president would shred the Iran deal, European governments have worked hard to come up with a package that would answer Trump’s objections. They promised multilateral action to sanction and deter Iran’s missile production and its meddling in the Middle East, along with a mutual effort to prevent Tehran from resuming large-scale uranium enrichment when current restrictions expire in the mid-2020's.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, also seemed impressed by the pressure Trump managed to focus on his regime, with the help of China. In January he launched the first diplomatic initiative of his six-plus years in power.  By March, Kim was communicating, through South Korea, for the proposal of a summit with Trump, along with a vague promise of denuclearization.  But there still is no definition for what “denuclearization” means to either party.. 

So far, Trump has screwed up both negotiations with Iran and with North Korea, and the way he did it was very telling.

For the Iran deal, he didn’t plunge into the weeds of the deal with the Europeans (he never gets involved with any details) and he concluded that it would not be strong enough, so he never seriously considered it.  Senior European officials who lobbied him later said he appeared totally unfamiliar with its details.

His sole focus, it turned out, was to satisfy a campaign promise of repudiating President Obama’s principal foreign policy legacy.

As to North Korea, Trump never seemed to take seriously that Kim was not looking for a quick deal, but instead for a confusing multistage process, and his “denuclearization” was a very distant endpoint.

His regime would probably have been unwilling to make any concessions worth pursuing, or they probably would have planned to repeat their past practice of pocketing any US economic favors, while cheating on any and all of their pledges.

But as usual, Trump never bothered to investigate Kim’s intentions.  He instead impulsively pulled the plug on all negotiations when Pyongyang issued a statement that Trump didn’t like.  And this totally blindsided the South Korean President Moon Jae-in as well as other US allies.

Trump has now said the Korea summit may go ahead.  But there is no sign that Kim has changed his position on what he thinks “denuclearization” means.

Still, the past month has taught all those involved a real lesson about the US President.   Trump is not up to any serious negotiation.

He can’t be expected to seriously weigh costs and benefits, or make complex trade-offs. He’s only good at bluster, hype and showy gestures, but little else.

In short, he may be the worst presidential deal maker in modern history.

Copyright G.Ater  2018