Korea will miss Trump's flair
In this Jan. 19, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump speak to reporters before leaving the White House in Washington. A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit against President Trump by porn actress Stormy Daniels that sought to tear up a hush-money settlement about their alleged affair but a bigger storm is brewing with the completion of the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into his potential collusion with Russians in the 2016 presidential election. Then, his foreign policy, resting heavily on the resolution of North Korea's denuclearization, would likely get unhinged. AP-Yonhap
By Oh Young-jin
U.S. President Donald Trump could have pulled it off, cutting the Gordian knot on the North Korean nuclear conundrum once and for all. But such a dramatic Trumpian resolution appears no viable prospect after his no-deal Hanoi, Vietnam, summit with North Korea's young dictator Kim Jong-un.
Now the vicious cycle appears to be restarting and with a vengeance ― the fear is that this time there may be no turning back. The result could be worse than what Trump critics have called for.
The Trump solution could go for an early deal, which would grind the North's nuclear program to a halt and get it going in reverse. His solution would reduce the chance of the North's implosion because Pyongyang would be able to open up for goods from and exchanges with the outside world, significantly easing its economy from the dire straits it has been in.
The chance of explosion ― acting out to the outside with its nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction ― would also go down amid the friendly atmosphere.
Then, in the Trumpian wisdom lies the possibility that the Kim regime would sink or swim in the brave new world it's jumping into. Thus, the time bomb of the North that has been ticking and stopping for the past seven decades would disarm itself.
Trump would make good on his promise to put the North Korean nuclear issue “front and center” in his foreign affairs agenda, resolving one of the most dangerous challenges to the world in general and Koreans in particular.
It could be the best “transactional” achievement for the man who takes pride in being the artist of the deal.
But the Hanoi summit dissolved much of the Trump charm.
Media outlets are generating their versions of what happened ― ranging from Trump's sudden inexplicable change of heart to Kim Jong-un's complacency, their unconventional “top-down” negotiating pattern to the participation of National Security Advisor John Bolton, a relic from the George W. Bush era and believer in Francis Fukuyama's end of history.
Whatever the real reason, Trump has been overtaken and bogged down by the Washington bureaucracy, to which the small community of North Korea experts belongs to.
Quite possibly, Trump has been tamed to follow the old playbook written and revised by Washington's North Korea hands.
The playbook is about a standstill ― finding ways of making it look as if there is progress when actually there is none.
In the Obama era, that was called “strategic patience,” and George W. Bush called it an “axis of evil” to lump together the North with Iraq and Iran, a clever way of enabling the Bush administration to claim a victory, when it settled one of the three. Iraq was the victim
Trump may make an unexpected move on the North but it won't be enough to change the tone of the reset narrative. Then, the Mueller report about his potential collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election would surely prevent Trump from deviating for a new course. In Hanoi, he admitted that he was distracted by congressional testimony from his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who called his former boss a “racist, cheat and liar.”
Work is under way to drive the last nail in the coffin that contains Trumpian initiatives. On Wednesday, he bristled at the first reports that activity had been detected at the North's nuclear facilities.
Now, the worry is that the Korean Peninsula will be hurled back in time to this time of last year.
In 2017, Kim and Trump built their animosity to a boiling point so much so that the chance of a second war after the first one in 1950-53 was almost palpable.
Then the Olympic truce came unexpectedly and the war clouds quickly dissipated with the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games serving as a turning point.
President Moon Jae-in acted as a mediator ― mounting hectic shuttle diplomacy including exchanges of high-level delegates' visits and two summits with Kim in April and May. Then, the historic June meeting between Trump and Kim, the first summit between the incumbent leaders of the two adversaries, came to pass in June.
Rarely does magic work twice.
With the benefit of doubt taken from both sides, tension on the peninsula could go up more rapidly and over a trivial issue. There is fertile ground for such an ominous serendipity to sprout and blossom.
The Hanoi summit could be nothing less than a major humiliation to Kim Jong-un.
As with Trump, the likelihood is that his instinct-based initiative has given in to the old “you-die-and-I-live” policy of Pyongyang's old bureaucrats. Kim couldn't afford to look weak anymore.
Then, there would be a reduced role Moon can play this time around. He has successfully brought Kim out once but it is hard to imagine a second time after Hanoi. Trump has rarely been a friend of Moon's.
So the stage is set for the two enemies who have just found out they couldn't be friends and the mediator who has lost their trust. I hope for divine intervention.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie@gmail.com, foolsdie5@koreatimes.co.kr) is the digital managing editor of The Korea Times.