One of Donald Trump’s most prominent critics leading up to his talks with Kim Jong-un has hailed his decision to walk out on the North Korean dictator. Susan Rice, a former national-security adviser and ambassador to the UN for Barack Obama, had warned that Trump would “cave” to Kim in a New York Times op-ed earlier this week. This morning, however, Rice offered Trump praise for making the right call in the end:
Rice, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, offered rare praise for Trump in an interview with NPR in the wake of his decision to cut short a two-day summit with Kim once it became clear that no deal to fully denuclearize North Korea could be reached. …
“For the United States to have agreed to lift all sanctions in the absence of real and complete denuclearization would have been a tremendous mistake,” she said.
Rice added the optimal deal would have been to have incremental commitments towards shuttering North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting targeted sanctions. But such as a deal “apparently was not achievable” with Kim insistent on lifting all sanctions.
Rice’s comments about North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are well taken, even if both could easily be applied to the Iran deal signed by the president she served. It’s still good to learn the hard way as long as one learns. Otherwise, give Rice legit kudos here for assessing the outcome by the same standard she laid out earlier in the week. It would have been very easy to shift goalposts here and crow over Trump’s lack of a deal while ignoring that it was Trump who scotched it, and for good reasons.
How did our allies closest to the situation assess the outcome? Did the lack of an agreement from the Hanoi summit make it a failure with Japan and South Korea? Not at all, apparently. NBC News reports that both Japan and South Korea are breathing “a collective sigh of relief,” with specific praise for Trump in resetting the dynamic with Kim:
Some of the countries living in fear of Kim Jong Un’s arsenal appeared to heave a collective sigh of relief Thursday even though President Donald Trump abruptly left the nuclear summit with North Korea without an agreement. …
Trump showing strength by walking away from the negotiating table was preferable to him meeting Kim’s demands, according to Tomohiko Taniguchi, one of Japanese President Shinzo Abe’s senior policy advisers.
While Tokyo has long wanted a deal, ensuring it’s the right deal is crucial, Taniguchi said.
“This ‘friendly walk-away’ was much better than giving a wrong signal to Kim Jong Un,” he added. “Mr. Trump succeeded in setting in place the kind of dynamics between the two — one begging and the other refusing.”
That’s a point I also make in my column this morning at The Week. Kim almost certainly knew how badly Trump could use a big foreign-policy success and how tempting it would be to go the Iran-deal route to get it. By walking away, Trump demonstrated to Kim that he’ll need to get serious to bring an end to sanctions:
Of course he did the right thing. The left wants to be critical of something they could have never accomplished. Look at the disastrous Iran failure.
What is this accomplished thing that the left never could have done?
@Greg: Gotten N. Korea to stop tests, firing missiles, return hostages, return remains and come to the negotiating table. Otherwise, they would have.
North Korea conducted their first nuclear weapon test in 2006. They finished the testing phase once they had all the data they needed. They’re presently estimated to have between 13 and 60 strategic weapons. Their Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 ICBMs have ranges of 6,000 and 8,000 miles, respectively. Both missile systems have been successfully tested. Unlike Iran, North Korea has reduced its stockpiles of nothing.
@Greg:
Why don’t you, and Wheeler, make a list of all the advances Obama made in denuclearizing the North Koreans?
@retire05: They gave them 1 million in aid while while Kim was earning the nick lil rocket man.
@retire05, #5:
Why don’t you tell me why doing so is relevant? Obama made significant progress regarding Iran’s nuclear program. He made none with North Korea. No one had any illusions about that.
Thus far, no significant progress has been made by anyone. If at some point Trump actually does, I will be glad of it. He could start by listening more closely to what our nation’s intelligence community and his own Secretary of State are telling him.
@Greg:
Well, apparently Trump DID listen to somebody, because he didn’t give away the farm as feared. Surely you don’t give him credit for figuring that out all by himself?
North Korea stopped testing a while back, maybe hoping that stopping would kill sanctions, maybe to keep China off its back, maybe because the rifle range blew up. If it was option #1, he’ll likely resume tests to punish Trump for walking. So option #1 is self-testing. If it was #2 or #3, probably not, so we won’t know.
@Greg: They’ve never put a warhead on a missile and they’ve never hit anything with a missile but the surface of the ocean. Kind of important.
Oh, he progressed it alright. Then oversaw the sale of uranium to Russia with probably found its way to Iran as well. Oh yeah, LOTS of progress… if you’re a radical Islamic.
@George Wells:
No, only an idiot gives away all the leverage and then pays the opposition for the honor of accepting their terms, merely for headlines. Trump is no idiot; he wants RESULTS that favor the civilized community.
@Deplorable Me:
Ummm… I agreed with that. I agreed with what Trump did. You just like to say “No” because you think saying “Yes” to anything is a sign of weakness. It isn’t.
@George Wells: We apparently disagreed on WHY.
@Deplorable Me:
Sure.