Did China Sink the Talks?

So the talks with North Korea are off, at least for the time being.  President Trump has issued a letter, precipitously, canceling the talks with Kim Jong-Un scheduled for June, and pulling the plug on the rapprochement that was underway.

It had sort of seemed like things were going well.  Kim was saying the right things, and the hoped-for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula seemed like it was a very possible outcome.  Nobel peace prizes were even being discussed.

Well, apparently this didn't sit well with our "friends" in Beijing, who have a weird relationship with North Korea to begin with, sort of like having to defend your daughter when she gets drunk and crashes the family Buick.  Not long ago, Kim apparently went to some coastal town in China to meet with Chinese leaders, and things changed.

The rhetoric went from a real willingness to negotiate, to a far more hostile tone.  And seemingly the president had had enough, and he abruptly said that we simply did not need to keep the scheduled talks in Singapore on the books if Kim was going to act like that.

So what changed?

And why, we ask, did China apparently push Kim to test the resolve of the USA under President Trump?  Because, not to go all post hoc, ergo propter hoc on you, but it sure looks like it was influence from China that changed the tone of the public discourse and, ultimately, sank the talks.

Kim, it has been written here, is only about Kim.  He wants to keep himself in power and, if it is also possible, to look "big" in the eyes of the rest of the world.  Chinese leadership is about making China the most powerful nation on earth.

I have also noted in previous columns that the Chinese could not be happy about the upcoming talks.  I doubt it matters to them whether the Korean peninsula is denuclearized or not, but it does matter that they have the buffer state between them and the free world, in the person of South Korea.  Anything that lowers tensions at the DMZ is probably not bad for Beijing, but not to the point of threatening, in the eyes of China, to produce a peace that could lead to reunification.  That's bad for China.

Perhaps the tone had been too civil for the Chinese.  Perhaps they feared that their control of Little Rocket Man would slip if the tensions eased and it were the USA -- and particularly President Trump -- who was facilitating a better life for the North Korean people.  After all, America actually appears to care more about the people of North Korea than either Kim Jong-Un or the Chinese do.  God forbid, the Chinese must have thought, that it be the US that ended up feeding those darn people.

There are never accidents with these people in charge of the communist regimes in Asia.  If the rhetoric changes its tone, it can readily be assumed that Beijing wanted the tone changed.  President Trump knows it, John Bolton knows it and Mike Pompeo knows it.

But Beijing is messing with the wrong president this time.  For once, they're dealing with a president who is more concerned with doing what is best for America.  A president with a spine and a clue, not just a pen and a phone.  A president who sits in stark contrast to Barack Obama, who in his desperation to sign something with Iran, got us into an execrable deal that it took PResident Trump to extricate us from.

Donald Trump does not need to have a meeting with North Korea.  Someone needed to tell the Chinese that.

But I think they know that now.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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