Trump's magical mystery tour
By Donald Kirk
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President Trump had to have had a great time during his 12-day journey to East Asian capitals. Everywhere he went he was treated like royalty. No hostile politicos taunting him, at least to his face, no nasty foes hurling epithets close range as he shuttled from one leader's center of power to another, no enemies in high places trying to cost him his job even if they disagreed with him. Oh, there were demonstrators here and there, candlelight vigilantes in Seoul trying to make themselves heard as his motorcade came and went, protesters in Manila battling police to let him know they wanted him to go home. That was about it. The leaders of the two communist countries on his itinerary, China and Vietnam, made certain no rude noises at all would foul the atmosphere.
Not that all was sweetness and light. Nobody wanted to hear him proclaiming the "military option," not even a surgical "preemptive strike" on a North Korean missile launch site. And nobody was too interested in his pleas for relief from trade barriers that he blamed for America's extraordinary trade deficits, mainly with China but also with Japan and South Korea. Unlike his foes at home in Washington DC, however, his interlocutors weren't rude to him. China's President Xi Jinping politely talked up "multilateral" trading arrangements, as if to distract from Trump's insistence on bilateral deal-making. You began to understand why he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so beloved by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Why join a club of a dozen nations, not one of which wanted really to concede a thing? Would anyone realistically expect the Japanese to open wide to American rice, and who would believe American cars would be creating traffic jams in Tokyo and Osaka just because of some piece of paper setting forth rules and conditions?
That's a cynical view, admittedly. A lot of people have been pouring out lengthy papers showing why TPP would have been what Americans needed. Why, it might have been even better than KORUS, the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Oh, hang on, hasn't the U.S. deficit with Korea been widening ever since KORUS was signed five years ago? Trump alluded to unfair trading arrangements while standing beside Moon at the Blue House after their summit. Moon didn't mention it. He opposes revising KORUS, a win-win for South Korea for sure, as much as he hates Trump ordering air strikes on North Korea.
Trump, however, was quite circumspect, adjusting his pitches at every stop. He might not get too excited about KORUS in Seoul, but he was blunt when talking about unfair trading practices in Beijing. And he opened up about the South China Sea in Vietnam. His stopover there was one of the trickiest. Americans may not know much about the Korean War, but we haven't fully processed our humiliation in Vietnam. So how did Trump deal with that one? He overlooked it in the one-time enemy capital of Hanoi and in Danang, the central coastal city that was once the headquarters of the Third Marine Amphibious Force, command center for two divisions of marines floundering around the rice paddies and jungles of "South" Vietnam.
Like other journos, I dropped by "Three MAF" when not walking around with marines in South Vietnam's northern provinces. Did Trump mention the U.S. forces who fought and died in vain? Not likely. Instead, when he got to Hanoi to meet the leaders whose predecessors won the war for "North" Vietnam, he paid tribute to the "spirit" of the Vietnamese, offering to assist in demanding rights to the waters that lap up on their eastern shores. And who might be denying the Vietnamese those waters and their hidden wealth of oil and natural gas? That's right, China, where he had just spent a couple of days.
But Trump's conversations were quite gentlemanly. He avoided human rights except when sounding off against the iniquities of North Korea in a rousing address to South Korea's national assembly. He knew perfectly well that nobody in China, Vietnam or the Philippines wanted to hear that expression at all. He found a soul mate in the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police have killed thousands of drug dealers and users.
The meeting with Duterte must have struck a responsive chord in the Trumpster's heart as he flew back to DC, facing the same old problems, the same political foes and New York Times/Washington Post columnists, the same think-tank know-it-alls. It was like, back to work after all the fun and games playing with potentates who behaved nicely even while plotting their next moves against him.
Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has been covering war and peace in Asia for decades.