Give peace a chance: perhaps Trump’s weird ways will work with Kim
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After taking on almost all of America’s key partners (or the Party of Davos in the Trumpian-Bannon vernacular) over the weekend, Trump is set to meet Kim Jong-un in an historic summit in Singapore. The White House has confirmed that Trump and Kim will meet without aides, mano a mano, a terrifying prospect for advocates of process-driven diplomacy.
And Trump is clearly in no mood to comply with the orthodoxies of the Western foreign policy establishment. He reiterated his commitment to protectionist trade policies at the G7, refused to sign a joint-communique affirming a commitment to a ‘rules-based international order’, and called for Russia to be readmitted to the forum.
Phew.
Let’s spin this in a more positive direction: it might just turn out that the very qualities that make him so infuriating to serious Western policy makers might just change the atmosphere over North Korea.
Kim is a thug; the Donald operates like a mafia boss. Maybe they might just get along. Neither cares much for legal authority. Kim makes the law; Donald can’t wait to pardon himself. Neither cares for traditional authority. Kim overhauled his military leadership last week in a bold attack on what must pass for a North Korean ‘establishment’; Donald is openly dismissive of the leadership that has basically defined the Republican party in the post-war period. (“He’s not a war hero … I like people that weren’t captured” is how he described war hero John McCain).
For Trump, it’s all about charisma and indefinable gut instinct. I’ll know “within the first minute” whether Kim is interested in serious rapprochement, he said. It’s “just my touch, my feel. That’s what I do.” Kim too has an eye for a photo-op, knows how to make the big statement. But that’s where the comparisons end – if Donald is a pound shop Corleone (a bit like the oily ‘Vinnie’ in Godfather III), then Kim is the real deal. He had his own uncle executed and presides with absolute ruthlessness over the world’s most precarious state.
At least it’s fun writing about Trump. No such luck with Prime Minister May. She addresses the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers tonight in a bid to get the European withdrawal bill through the Commons. It was reported this morning that she will say: “We must be clear that we are united as a party in our determination to deliver on the decision made by the British people.” Good luck with that.
There was plenty of noise today from both the hard Brexiteer and hard Remainer wing of the Tory party that shows in stark terms that consensus is yet to emerge on the government benches (not to mention on the Labour side).
Interestingly, former Home Secretary and key Tory Remainer Amber Rudd backed the PM in an op-ed in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. That says a lot about Rudd’s character – she has the power and incentive to go for May, but she chose not to. It shows too there may now be political capital in getting things done.
Meanwhile in the real world, UK manufacturing output fell at its fastest rate since 2012. It’s almost as if the government’s perpetual faff on Brexit is harming UK business…
Alastair Benn
News and Features editor