Trump Tries to Wreck America’s Alliances

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/opinion/trump-g7-north-korea.html

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If a president wanted to destroy the alliance between the United States and its oldest allies, what might that president do? I think he would do many of the things that President Trump is doing right now. The chaos during and after this past weekend’s G-7 meeting was just the latest example.

I don’t know why Trump is treating America’s Western allies as enemies. Maybe it’s based on a far-right, authoritarian ideology. Maybe it’s because Vladimir Putin really does have compromising information on Trump. Or maybe it’s for some other reason.

But I think it’s time to acknowledge that Trump is indeed taking steps to wreck the American alliance with Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan — and to respond appropriately. That’s the subject of my latest column.

As for North Korea … Trump has claimed that he doesn’t need to prepare for his nuclear summit with Kim Jong-un, which starts Tuesday in Singapore. You can bet Kim and the North Koreans will take a very different approach. “North Korean diplomats and negotiators have spent years preparing for this moment and what comes after,” tweeted New America’s Suzanne DiMaggio.

What might come from the summit? As it has in the past, North Korea may well agree to what looks like a good deal — before reneging later. “That’s not the hard part, getting them to an agreement. The hard part is implementation and verification,” said Sue Mi Terry of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on CNN yesterday.

The added danger is that Trump may be desperate for a public-relations win, after the blowup of the G-7 meeting in Quebec. That “increases the chance that Trump makes concessions so that the Kim summit looks like a success,” argues Daniel Drezner of Tufts University. “Otherwise he’ll be 0 for 2.”

Even with all these downsides, the fact that the countries are talking is good news, as my colleague Nick Kristof has written: “Trump’s engagement with North Korea has been chaotic and should have begun with working-level talks, but it’s still better for leaders to exchange handshakes than missiles.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin has a good preview of the summit; in Politico, Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution explores public opinion about the meeting.