Going Rogue

President Trump broke diplomatic norms in hopes of de-nuking North Korea. But the dealmaker in chief may have gotten played

- Bill Powell

FOR MORE THAN SIX DECADES, U.S. presidents had a hard and fast rule when it came to North Korea: Don’t meet with a dictator. The mere image of the leader of the free world standing with an authoritarian figure would bestow prestige and legitimacy on a rogue state—one that has flouted U.N. sanctions, assassinated political rivals and built a small nuclear arsenal.

Then, on June 12, Donald Trump burned the playbook. With full swagger, the president swept into steamy Singapore, where he sat down with Kim Jong Un in an unprecedented bid to get him to, as he put it, “de-nuke.” Afterward, Trump dismissed the idea that his presence alone had given the dictator something precious. “If I have to say I’m sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim, and that’s going to get us to save 30 million lives,” Trump said, “I’m willing to sit on the stage. I’m willing to travel to Singapore very proudly.”

As a candidate and now as president, there is nothing Trump likes more than being disruptive. North Korea, he reasoned, required such an approach. In his view, previous administrations had failed and then left him with a geopolitical mess. Indeed, outgoing President Barack Obama warned Trump that North Korea would be “the most urgent problem” he would face. “Thanks a lot for nothing, chief,” is how one National Security Council (NSC) staffer, who was not authorized to speak publicly, characterizes the Trump team’s reaction.

For nearly a year and a half, Trump blustered and threatened, and, for a moment, he even considered a pre-emptive first strike against the North. But he also got the U.N. to impose the toughest sanctions on the regime to date, and he got China, Pyongyang’s economic lifeline, to restrict its own trade with its neighbor. As a result, Trump had apparently captured North Korea’s attention in a way Obama never had.