Running military exercises immediately in advance of the summit can only be viewed by North Korea as a threat.
To negotiate effectively one must put oneself in the mind of the opponent and try to view the world from the opponent’s perspective. If I were Kim I would not trust the US given the long history of betrayals and broken promises in the last 70 years. In 1961 the US sent Cubans into Cuba and then failed to provide the promised support thereby insuring the failure at the Bay of Pigs. In 1974-75 the US reneged on its promised support of the South Vietnamese “allies” ensuring they would fall to the communists. In 1979 the US government abandoned the Shah of Iran, resulting in the takeover by the Islamic militants. In 2010/2011 the US supported the Muslim Brotherhood in its efforts to overthrow its allyEgyptian leader Hosni Mubarack despite Mubarack’s long term support for peace with Israel. Consider also the abandonment of the Iraqi government in 2010, resulting in the rise of ISIS.
Kim must be particularly concerned about the treatment of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Gaddafi succumbed to US and European pressure to abandon his nuclear program. Then the US betrayed him in 2011 when it actively supported the Islamic militant rebels with arms and airstrikes, ultimately resulting in Gaddafi’s brutal death at the hands of the Islamists. The US sent a clear message to dictators. Give up your nuclear weapons and we will kill you.
The President Trump who Kim may negotiate with over nuclear weapons is the same Trump who is “renegotiating” American trade agreements with China and Mexico (NAFTA) and who has stated he will walk away from those agreements. He also just reneged on the agreement with Iran made by his predecessor.
Given the behavior of the US over the past few decades why would any nation trust the US will live up to its agreement. It is hard to imagine that Kim will give up his nuclear weapons and expect to live.
Our foray into Libya was an epic disaster and what happened there should give anyone pause in trusting the U.S., but the Libyan people were not starving. The situation in North Korea is far more complex for the Kim regime who have to somehow survive and save face even as their people realize how poorly they are doing.
Ghaddafi didn’t have the protection of being a Chinese puppet state. NK is in essence a province of China with limited self rule by a tyrannical regime doing its bidding. The US is not going to do to NK what Obama did to Libya any more than we would attack China militarily. Kim knows that, and Trump is the first to acknowledge that it is China pulling the strings and use leverage on China to get concessions on NK.
China’s nukes are what will protect Kim. He doesn’t need his own, those were just a Chinese ploy to keep us distracted.
NK lived with military exercises for decades. SK lived under massive artillery arsenal of NK for decades. NK periodically attacks U.S. or S. Korean troops, killing many of them but have gotten away with it numerous times.
Either NK get all nukes, go about its expansion drive or it gives them up and save its neighbors a lot of trouble. If you think they would just mind their business if we left them alone and some spending money, you are dreaming.
They still have plenty of chemical weapons and missiles of short-to-medium range. They all work. They essentially have had no promise they kept.
Trump was right and legally able to toss the Iran agreement.As for those other examples you gave? They had nothing to do with Trump who, if you don’t know by now, is NOT a slime ball politician.
In all of your examples democrats were in control, correct?