New book reminds us: Trump got played — bigly — by North Korea

Teddy Roosevelt didn’t speak softly but carried a big stick. Donald Trump doesn’t speak softly, nor — often — knows how to wield a big stick.

As the presidential campaign heats up, Trump will escalate his threats against a range of enemies from China to the news media.

Like most bullies, it’s usually bluster.

A case in point is North Korea. When he took office, Trump vowed to bring that nuclear armed rogue state and its little dictator, Kim Jong Un, to its knees. Then, flashing his self-styled deal-making genius, he said he’d negotiate away the threat.

He failed on both counts.

I have little expertise on this topic, having spent most of my life as a political hack writer. Fortunately, there is a fabulous guide: Jung H. Pak, once a top North Korean analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution. She has just written a compelling book, “Becoming Kim Jong Un.”

Rather than a “crazy man,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham and others charged, she depicts Kim as ruthlessly brutal but shrewd and rational. This seems to be family tradition. The Kims have ruled Communist North Korea since 1948 when the post-World War II peninsula split in half. He succeeds his grandfather and his father, who died in 2011.

Despite initial skepticism, the 36-year-old comic book looking character has succeeded. Pak writes it became apparent he learned from his family “the mechanics and the art of coercive diplomacy — maintain the initiative, manufacture tension, sow fear, freeze out and then mend fends with China, the United State and South Korea, all the while steadily making progress on the nuclear weapons programs.”

That’s how it has played out over these past three years.

In the future shock of the Trump era, with one trauma cascading after another, it’s easy to forget how North Korea dominated the first year and a half of the Trump administration. The new president declared the “strategic patience” of the Obama administration was over. The back-and-forth charges were so intense and vitriolic that war seemed possible. Trump threatened to unleash on North Korea “fire and fury like the world has never seen” and said “military solutions are now fully in place.” At the United Nations, the president warned “Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.” He drew a red line: The North Koreans had to de-nuclearize.

Kim was just as vicious, calling Trump senile and vowing massive retaliation. A war on the Korean peninsula with hundreds of thousands of casualties didn’t seem remote.

By early 2018, with the help of South Korea, the rhetoric tamped down. Trump seized the moment to hold the first summit between an American president and North Korean leader. There were two sessions. Although little was achieved — and Pak notes how much better prepared the North Korean was than his American counterpart — Trump declared, “There is no longer is a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

That would be news in Pyongyang.

Kim, as Dr. Pak writes, not only didn’t dismantle his nuclear capabilities, he expanded them — with more missile tests.

Trump, believing his tough talk and economic sanctions, had offered Kim the promise of North Korea becoming an economic juggernaut with sizable foreign investments. He held out the allure of beachfront condominiums. This was no more persuasive than the earlier bluster.

“Kim is highly unlikely to give up his nuclear weapons in order to get a McDonald’s franchise in Pyongyang,” Pak writes.

Indeed, she suggests the North Korean dictator not only doesn’t want to become an economic powerhouse — if his countrymen ever became aware of living like the South Koreans do, it would be the end of the Kim  dynasty — or even a real peace. Continuing tensions help him domestically and elevate his standing geopolitically.

China, which has minimal regard for its troublesome neighbor but doesn’t want an American-dominated peninsula, can play a helpful role in tamping down Kim’s aggression. Yet with Trump, Kim has mended some his ties with Bejing which has less incentive to work with Washington now in this current climate.

After all the “fire and fury,” tough talk and threats of three years ago, Kim is more secure, with his nuclear weapons, having brushed aside any red line and enjoying a weakened American presence in the region.

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then the International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts 2020 Politics War Room with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.