He’s become world famous for embracing America’s enemies and backstabbing our allies. Yet, Donald Trump outdid himself Sunday — on the eve of joint military exercises with South Korea — when he announced the U.S. was scaling back participation to avoid offending his great friend, the nuclear-armed North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Perhaps this was just a frantic attempt to shift attention from the quagmire in Iran. Having failed to end Tehran’s nuclear program, the president is offering nuclear talks “without preconditions” to Kim. You will recall the two “fell in love” after Kim wrote Trump “beautiful letters” in 2018, and he responded in kind.
The military exercises, Trump said, would be “inappropriate and hostile” to a country that “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his presidency.
Unthreatening? Respectful? Anything but.
Kim humiliated Trump after meetings in 2018 and 2019 by rejecting nuclear talks and massively increasing his stock of nuclear weapons and missiles. He’s made clear he wants U.S. recognition as a nuclear power, one that threatens South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, as well as U.S. bases and territory.
Yet, Trump’s selective memory — remembering Kim’s love letters, but ignoring his rebuffs and insults — lays bare a terrible truth about our aging, raging president: his unshakeable belief that his “great” relations with Kim (and with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping) will ultimately convince them to do his bidding.
The president’s megalomaniacal belief in his own brilliance blinds him to his repeated failures with all three dictators. He refuses to recognize that far from friendship, Kim, Putin, and Xi are bound together in an axis of adversaries who are helping a fourth member — Iran — stand up to the United States.
Trump’s superman delusions aid all these adversaries, even as he dismisses allies who could help keep them in check.
“To treat Kim Jong Un as a partner of some kind is absolutely illogical and counterproductive,” I was told by retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, who served for more than three decades in the U.S. Navy, including in the Pacific.
Montgomery, who is a recognized expert on cyber and technology policy, is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he has coauthored an important book, Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Canceling the South Korea exercises, which Trump said he would have done if it wasn’t too late, decreases U.S. readiness, Montgomery told me, and puts U.S. troops at risk. About 28,500 are based in South Korea.
“Kim is not going to give up his nuclear weapon nor is he going to make some kind of deal that will win a Nobel Prize,” he said.
In fact, Montgomery added, Trump’s touted first term tête-à-têtes with Kim “made no impact whatsoever.” Kim increased his nuclear weapons yearly during Trump’s first and second term, and is now estimated to have around 50 to 60 nuclear warheads ready for use.
Moreover, North Korea is the perfect example of the close ties and fraternal help that the axis powers provide to each other. “Russia has helped North Korea build more accurate intercontinental missiles which can reach much of U.S. territory,” Montgomery said. “This already puts us under threat.”
Russia has also aided Pyongyang with advanced technology to improve its nuclear and missile programs, which decreases Kim’s willingness to negotiate.
For his part, the North Korean leader has repaid Russia by sending artillery shells, missiles, and tens of thousands of troops to help Putin attack Ukraine. They also work in Russian drone factories, freeing up Russian soldiers to go to the front.
Thus, the man Trump so admires contributes daily to Moscow’s slaughter of civilians in hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings in Ukraine.
Moreover, Putin, the president’s other self-professed buddy, joins axis members in helping the Iranian regime survive and continue to threaten American troops. Iran initially provided Russia with deadly Shahed drones, which Moscow now manufactures and upgrades. Those now-upgraded Iranian drones have killed U.S. troops in Kuwait. Putin also shared intelligence with Tehran that helped the regime target U.S. bases.
All this hasn’t even touched on the intensified partnership between Moscow and Beijing in which the two primary axis members share technology and intel to jointly undermine U.S. interests.
“The axis has helped Iran. The conflict with Iran ties up the U.S. military and makes us less ready for China, and the Russian attack on Ukraine distracts Europe. And Trump doesn’t see that the threats from North Korea make us less able to defend Taiwan,” Montgomery said.
Trump is incapable of connecting the dots. Like a sun god at the center of the world, he looks at each adversary through the lens of their relationship to him. He is blind to the links that bind them together.
The president thinks his personal diplomacy and that of close friends, like fellow real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are superior to normal diplomatic engagement. No expertise is necessary, Montgomery told me.
“His first term didn’t prove that to be true. It hasn’t moved any of the four axis powers, and it hasn’t moved the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” he noted. “It is an integrated task to fight the axis of aggressors. Especially if the president doesn’t recognize who the bad guys are.”
And, I would add, if those who do recognize the bad guys — like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and many GOP senators — are more interested in pacifying POTUS than in the security of the United States.
