May 8, 2018

A North Korea Deal Just Got More Likely

Yomiuri Shimbun via AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Here is Alex Ward:

What does Donald Trump’s stance on the Iran deal have to do with his relationship with North Korea? It turns out, quite a lot.

That’s because the president’s desire to pull out of a historic nuclear deal with Iran could likely hurt his chances of reaching a significant weapons agreement with Pyongyang. There’s a simple reason why, experts tell me: If Trump backtracks on America’s promises to Tehran, then North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has no reason to trust Trump during negotiations about Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

I think this is backward. It assumes that Kim will conclude that Trump can’t be trusted to keep his word. But if Kim is smart, that’s not at all what he’ll assume.

What is it that motivates Trump? We’ve all said it a million times: taking revenge on Barack Obama. And more generally, taking revenge on the political and cultural elites that have mocked him his entire life. Trump isn’t especially notorious for breaking his word, but he is notorious for nursing eternal dreams of vengeance against his enemies.

It hardly takes 3D chess analogies to figure out what this means. Obama couldn’t make a deal with Kim, which means Trump desperately wants to. Foreign policy elites have long declared North Korea a rogue state, so Trump wants to show that they were just too stupid to figure out how to handle the Kim family. And if Trump does make a deal, it will be his deal. He’ll defend it loudly and passionately no matter what. A nuclear missile could be in the air a minute from the White House and Trump would still be claiming that he made a great deal with Kim.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Trump will agree to anything. At the very least, his advisors will make sure of that. But killing the Iran deal is a very clear confirmation of his temperament: he may hate other people’s deals, but as long as it’s Trump’s deal—and the Obamas of the world disparage it—he can be trusted to stick with it. I’d guess that the odds of a deal with North Korea are now a bit better than they were a month ago.

POSTSCRIPT: Will it be a good deal? Will we get it quickly? I don’t know. But Kim probably understands his own leverage better than before. He knows what Trump wants, and that will make it a little easier to construct an agreement he’s likely to accept.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate