LETTER: Trump was played by North Korea
U.S. Intelligence services have recently confirmed again what they have always believed, and had warned the Trump administration about on multiple occasions. North Korea has no intention of complete denuclearization. It simply will not happen.
John Bolton, Donald Trump’s National Security adviser, says it will take a year to achieve. This is pure fantasy. The reality is that Trump has been superbly played by Kim Jong Un and the North Korean regime. He gave them a summit and respectability, and got nothing in return. Worse, he called off important regular military exercises, conducted jointly by the United States and South Korea, to prepare for a possible attack from the North. Trump said the drills were “provocative,” a term only previously used by the North Korean propaganda machine.
Trump’s recent statement that North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat” is nothing short of delusional! His lavish praise for an evil despot, who continues to starve his people and fill his prison camps with opponents of his regime, verges on the obscene. Of course, the defense of human rights has never been Trump’s strong point. We need only look to the migrant tragedy on our southern border to give truth to the words on Melania’s jacket – “I really don’t care.”
Appeasement of a brutal and cunning dictator will never give us peace and security. If Trump soon chooses to confront Kim, where will he find allies to back him up after alienating the likes of Britain, France, Germany, Canada and others? Trump has further compounded his foreign policy blunders at the recent G7 summit, in Singapore, and by scolding our NATO allies in Brussels. Then he heads off to Helsinki to cavort and conspire with yet another autocrat, Vladimir Putin. Like with Kim Jong Un, we will never know what Trump and Putin discussed, as the meetings are one-on-one with only translators present. This is utter lunacy!
Trump’s boasting that he is a “stable genius,” the smartest and most knowledgeable POTUS in history is just that – empty and meaningless braggadocio. One has to wonder if the real and certain danger to America’s safety and security lies not outside our borders but within the very walls of the White House. Trump cannot expect to conduct American foreign policy by “winging it.” His views that trade wars are good and winnable, and that the value of international alliances are to be determined solely on a cost basis, defies all rational thinking. Perhaps an appropriate sequel to the Art of the Deal should be the Art of the Diplomatic Disaster!
Carl Haberl
Washington