Day 192: Trump Totally Overmatched Dealing With China, North Korea
As complex and challenging as the issues are, Trump has made a mess of an already bad situation with ever-changing messages and ignorance.
Right now, China is the sole geopolitical power capable of jockeying with the the U.S. to be the world leader. While the U.S. and China are neither allies nor foes, oftentimes their goals overlap and they’re capable of working together. The most concise explanation of the relationship between the two nations: it’s complicated.
And Donald Trump isn’t helping things.
Chinese president Xi Jingping and his wife visited the U.S. in April and Trump proclaimed the meeting a success.
Trump took credit for broadening trade cooperation between the two nations (though the groundwork was actually laid under Barack Obama).
But the recent messages regarding China and North Korea have fluctuated substantially. There’s no cohesion in any of these messages:
To summarize on North Korea, from March to July, Donald Trump has claimed: China does very little to help, China’s going to do a lot to help, China is trying to help, China tried to help, China has no interest in trying to help, China’s going to do a lot to help, China does nothing to help.
To be clear, dealing with North Korea is one of the most complicated issues facing the U.S. (and the world) at the moment. Their most recently tested missiles potentially have the ability to put the continental U.S. within range of an attack.
Trump’s policy stance can most generously described as naive.
Some experts suggest Trump misjudged exactly how far the Chinese president would go to help rein in North Korea. China is the North’s long-time ally, and also its biggest trading partner.
The president is “not going to cut a deal with Xi,” said Ed Turzanski, an international policy and national security expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Turzanksi worked in the U.S. intelligence community during the Reagan administration.
According to Turzanski, leaders such as China’s Xi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “are not interested in forming personal relationships and cutting win-win deals, because in large part they still operate on a zero-sum game — you win, I lose,” Turzanski explained.
“They are cold-blooded in calculating when it comes to national interests, and they are not going to do you any favors,” he added.
Trump’s wild vacillations on the topic make the U.S. look desperate for intervention from a nation that is a competing force of the U.S. and strategic partner of North Korea. Spouting nonsense directed at China at random intervals makes him look foolish and lays bare the idea that the U.S. has no idea what to do about an ever-growing problem.
North Korean policy has been a critical concern for American presidents for generations and a cohesive message and strategy is vital. Obama warned Trump of two primary things when they met just after the election last year: 1) Don’t hire Mike Flynn and 2) Stay vigilant on North Korea.
Trump obviously whiffed on the first. Time will tell on the second, but the fastball is getting closer and closer and Trump hasn’t even started to swing.
192 days in, 1270 to go
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