NK may define Trumph's foreign policy legacy

By Andrew Hammond

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's vow to destroy his nation's key nuclear testing site "is a good first step" in preparations for the landmark June 12 Singapore summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim. With positive mood music currently surrounding the Trump-Kim session, North Korea offers the potential to become the U.S. president's first big foreign policy win.

Any final, comprehensive deal between Washington and Pyongyang is possibly years away. Yet, it is already clear that it would be a remarkable achievement if Trump were to help preside over "denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula; help seal a peace treaty between the North and the South to supplement the armistice ending the 1950-53 Korea War; and in the process de-escalate tensions in the world's last Cold War-era frontier.

Should Kim ultimately decide to abandon North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for economic aid and security guarantees, the reason why this would ― potentially ― be so central to Trump's eventual foreign policy legacy is that almost a year and a half into office, the president's international actions have been much more defined by the dismantling of policies of previous presidents, especially Barack Obama, rather than building something new. He has, for instance, last week withdrew U.S. participation from the nuclear agreement between Iran and the U.S., China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Prior to that decision he scrapped U.S. involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal with key allies in Asia-Pacific and the Americas; withdraw Washington from the Paris climate change deal agreed to by over 170 nations; and launched a review of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which may yet collapse in 2018. The first three of these initiatives (Iran, TPP and Paris) were Obama-era signature policies, and Trump has also partially rolled back other key measures from the previous administration, including the Cuba liberalization policy.

Yet, for all this diplomatic action, thus far the new administration has failed to forge any clear, coherent and comprehensive new Trump doctrine, centered around his "America first" vision. When Trump moved into the White House, he promised a radical platform that could have reshaped U.S. foreign and trade policy more radically than at any point since the beginning of the Cold War ― the time that Harry Truman helped build a consensus around U.S. global leadership.

To be sure, Trump has made some moves to shift away from this postwar orthodoxy ― pursued by both Democratic and Republican presidents ― such as building U.S.-led alliances to expand the liberal democratic order. But in practice, much of the last year and a half has also been characterized by policy incoherence and U-turns on issues such as military action in 2017 and 2018 in Syria ― a departure from Trump's 2016 campaign rhetoric; and whether key international alliances like NATO are "obsolete" or "not obsolete."

These flip-flops reflect not just the ad-hoc nature of the new president's style of governing, and his contrarian character, but also the divisions within his team on key foreign policy issues. Take the example of the Paris climate deal, Iran nuclear agreement, and TPP, where then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was just one of the senior members of his team urging Trump to remain in the accords rather than leaving them.

Yet, as the president enters mid-2018, he now appears to have in place foreign policy personnel much more aligned to his political instincts. Former CIA Director Pompeo has replaced Tillerson as secretary of state, and the conservative hawk John Bolton has taken over as national security adviser from the more pragmatic General H.R McMaster.

This changing of the guard could be very important to Trump, almost 18 months into office, in the context of the fact that his political window of opportunity to put an enduring stamp on U.S. foreign policy may soon narrow rapidly ― unless he wins a second term in 2020.

With this in mind, he and his new team will now seek to double down on other foreign policy priorities, including the ambition to do the "deal of the century" in the Middle East with Israel and the Palestinians (which will become more complicated by the U.S. president's decision to move the U.S. Embassy this week to Jerusalem); and forge renegotiated economic relationships with key countries such as Japan and China which are seen by the president as less one-sided and detrimental to the United States.

It is also to be hoped that Trump's new team will prove better foils than Tillerson and McMaster were for the president's ad-hoc style of governing, which regularly exposes his lack of experience and knowledge of international issues. If so, this will help serve as a compass for the White House in helping navigate the significant uncertainties of international affairs in 2018 and beyond.

Taken overall, the historic potential opportunity offered by the denuclearization negotiations with North Korea could become a central part of Trump's foreign policy legacy. However, in this high-stakes gamble for glory, the president could yet emulate many others who have failed to bring a sustained, peaceful diplomatic outcome to one of the key international challenges facing the United States.

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics. Contact him at andrewkorea@outlook.com.