Jennifer Rubin-- Damage control at White House to reverse Trumps stunning blunder

Damage control at White House to reverse Trump’s stunning blunder


https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/03/09/damage-control-at-white-house-to-reverse-trumps-stunning-blunder/?utm_term=.8003809133bd



by Jennifer Rubin March 9 at 4:30 PM Email the author
1:50
Sanders lists conditions for Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says President Trump won’t meet with Kim Jong Un unless North Korea takes “actions” toward denuclearization. (Reuters)

At the White House press briefing room lectern, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders essentially walked back President Trump’s promise of unconditional talks with Kim Jong Un by the end of May. She insisted that before such talks can occur — Trump never mentioned any conditions — North Korea would need to take “verifiable” steps to denuclearize. North Korea will not voluntarily denuclearize, at least under this regime and at least not now, let alone allow inspectors free rein. In imposing conditions North Korea cannot possibly agree to, the White House has wriggled out of what could have been a devastating error.63

In other words, because Trump has both a massive ego and virtually no understanding of foreign policy, he foolishly leaped at the bait dangled by the South and North Koreans. Putting Kim Jong Un, a human rights criminal whose regime effectively murdered Otto Warmbier and who is in violation of multiple United Nations declarations, on the stage with the American president would have been a gift of immense proportions to Kim. It would cast him as a normal leader on the international stage, who — if Trump had his way — achieved a publicity coup without giving up anything.

Even worse — until saner heads prevailed — it would have been letting Trump in the room with Kim without North Korea doing much of anything. North Korea’s aim aside from regime preservation (which it believes requires nukes) is to use nuclear blackmail to force U.S. troops from South Korea, the first step in its long-stated goal of reunifying the peninsula under its rule of terror.
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As Nicholas Eberstadt recently wrote:.................