A Different President -- The World Is Learning

Let us go back to the news of the past few weeks.

President Trump announces that the USA and North Korea are going to have a summit meeting "soon" to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and an easing of tensions.  The world prepares for the meeting "maybe" to happen, and if it does, maybe late this year or early next year, given the glacial pace they are used to in diplomatic circles.

Then it is announced that the summit will take place "within weeks" and we await an actual date, wondering how quickly that can happen, and where.  Shortly thereafter, we get the word -- June 12, indeed, "weeks away", and in Singapore.  There is Nobel Peace Prize talk in some circles.

Then, Presidentchairmanwhateverheis Kim is called to a meeting on the coast in China, and thereafter starts making some statements that are far less accommodating than those he had been making about the meeting and the president.  We assume that the Chinese are not happy with the rapprochement, and the possibility that someone other than China will be able to influence Kim and the North Koreans.

President Trump replies by abruptly cancelling the meeting, declaring that he is willing to meet, but not in the climate that followed the North Korea-China seaside meeting, whatever that was.  And all of a sudden, Kim starts saying things and doing things both in public and behind the scenes to get the meeting back on -- which, as we speak, it seems to be.

So what happened?

Well, we can all make some serious mistakes by trying to figure out what people of other cultures are doing, but I'm not a politician or a social scientist so I don't care, and I will do just that.

In fact, I think it was the Chinese making the mistake.  They have more in common with President Trump than Trump does with his predecessors, and they're only learning that now.

I suspect that the meeting at the beach went sort of like this:

China: Mr. Kim, we think that you have gone too far in meeting with this Trump.  But now that you have agreed, you can push it.  Look at Iran.  They were meeting with US and they pushed and then they could go back to building nukes in just ten years.  They pushed again and got the sanctions lifted.  They pushed yet again and got a pallet of cash delivered in the middle of the night!  And the mullahs gave up nothing!

Kim: Ah, yes.  I will do that.  Thank you.  Please pass the goat. 

So Kim pushed, but Trump is not Obama.  This president simply killed the meetings -- meetings that Kim needed a whole heck of a lot more than Trump did.  So Kim did a 180, started being accommodating again, and voila, the meetings were back on.  And Kim had to be asking himself what the Chinese were talking about.

I have to think the coast meeting went a lot like that, with the Chinese telling Kim he was being too easy, that if you push the Americans they will fold like a cheap tent, just like the Obama folks were with Iran.  And the Americans they used to deal with -- Obama, Kerry, Hillary -- would fold, and they'd give you taxpayers' money too, so it was understandable. 

But Donald Trump is not Obama or Kerry or Hillary.  Letting two-bit dictators like Kim walk all over his country is not Trump's style, and it's not America's style either.  It was Obama's style, sure.  It was the past State Departments' style, but it is not Trump's and not Mike Pompeo's style either.

Now we have a president with a spine and a clue, and with the world-view that if you want to be strong and lead, the first thing you have to do is to be strong.

The Chinese are going to have to figure that out, but perhaps they're doing so ... thankfully before learning the hard way.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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