Donald Trump’s acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet is a master stroke. It’s exactly the kind of thing Ronald Reagan liked to do. Reagan, you may recall, announced his pursuit of a missile defense system in March 1983 on national television without alerting his advisers beforehand. Liberals went crazy. Then he decided to end the Cold War by reaching out to Mikhail Gorbachev. Conservatives went bonkers. Reagan, we were told, had become a useful idiot. Today he is hailed as a visionary by all and sundry.
Whether Trump’s move will work depends in part on how eager the North Korean regime is to escape the increasingly draconian sanctions that have been imposed upon it. Has the moment arrived for a grand bargain in which the North forfeits its nuclear arsenal in exchange for the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea? This is what Trump’s erstwhile comrade in arms Steve Bannon has previously floated and it is doubtless on Trump’s mind.
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