Back in 2017, at this time of year, Donald Trump issued a warning to North Korean despot Kim Jong-un, whom he dubbed “little rocket man”. He reacted to Kim’s test-firing of a missile towards Japan with extensive joint US-South Korea military exercises and stated that talking to Pyongyang was “not the answer”. US forces were “locked and loaded”, he said. Kim’s threats to the US would be met with “fire and fury of a kind the world has never seen”.
One year into his first term, Trump was aiming to get Kim to drop his nuclear weapons programme and to abandon plans to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting the continental US.
His U-turn to diplomacy, featuring summits with Kim at Panmunjom and Singapore the following year, surprised many and has disappointed everyone. He hoped to end US-led sanctions on North Korea as part of a phased dismantling of its nuclear weapons programme. But the Hanoi summit held in 2019 made clear that Trump’s carrot-and-stick deal making strategy was completely ineffectual.
This diplomacy had featured “beautiful letters” and “great” personal meetings with Kim. Like all of Trump’s much-vaunted deal making, it achieved absolutely nothing. Russia and China made US sanctions ineffective. And Kim has since proceeded with his ICBM development programme and is building up his arsenal of nuclear weapons.
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Kim has established a new nuclear weapons base at Sinpung-dong, near the Chinese border. He is reported to be accessing Russian missile technology in exchange for his assistance to Putin in providing manpower and weapons for the war against Ukraine, according to security institutions in Washington.
When South Korea’s newly elected president, Lee Jae-myung, entered the wretched Oval Office on Monday, it looked like Trump was preparing another mafia-type shakedown.
Trump’s Truth Social posts suggested that he still contests the impeachment of Lee’s predecessor for the venial (in Trump’s eyes) sin of illegally declaring martial law, invading Seoul’s legislature by force and attempting to suspend constitutional democracy to counter a totally invented menace of leftwing subversion in alliance with North Korea.
The Oval Office shakedown fizzled out when the canny Lee ignored the bombast and lies spewed out by Trump under the dark, watchful eyes of JD Vance. He ignored Trump’s ridiculous demand that South Korea surrender Camp Humphreys as US territory. Camp Humphreys is an extensive military base furnished by South Korea to the US and recently expanded at a cost of $10.7 billion – of which South Korea paid 93 per cent. But Trump wants sovereignty – or another Guantánamo? Will Lee be described as “nasty” if he refuses?
Lee used humour to defuse a potential meltdown, referring to Trump’s peacemaking role and the prospect of his building another Trump Tower in Pyongyang and going golfing with dictator Kim Jong-un. (The scorecard – a potential candidate for a Nobel Prize for fiction if the peace prize doesn’t materialise.) Lee even praised the fantastically gaudy and kitsch gold decorations Trump has splattered around the room as symbolising future US prosperity.
Trump’s grotesque dishonesty reached a new level with his statement about his relationship with Kim Jong-un: “I have a great relationship with him. I spend a lot of free time with him talking about things that we probably aren’t supposed to talk about.”
This drivel about a “great relationship” from the American idiot-king ignores the use of North Korean conscripts as cannon fodder in the murderous war on Ukraine. It ignores the large provision of ordnance by North Korea for use on innocent men, women and children in civilian centres in Ukraine. Are those the things that “we probably aren’t supposed to talk about”? Or are there other taboo subjects that Trump wants to keep secret?
What is it about Trump that he has “great relationships” with Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Binyamin Netanyahu and Kim Jong-un – while accusing Volodymyr Zelenskiy of being a dictator who holds no cards but risks world nuclear war?
The truth is that Trump is a proven coward in international relationships. The acronym Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) is correctly applied to him. He stands up to weak parties in international affairs because he can do so without any risk – as the Iranians and Houthis have learned and the Maduro regime in Venezuela will probably find out.
He bullies those he can threaten with sanctions and economic costs. China has called his bluff – and he has chickened out in his trade war with it.
[ Trump extends China truce for 90 days, averting tariff hikeOpens in new window ]
His military can be safely deployed on the streets of Democrat-controlled cities because there is no danger of fightback or body bags. He takes on US universities and students because they can’t fight back. He has his police rough up Democrat opponents who challenge him. He sanctions judges in the International Court of Justice for upholding elementary canons of humanity and international legal principles. He threatens to do the same to EU officials.
He shames America and Americans. The end of his presidency can’t come too soon.
