Setkání Kim Jong-un a Donalda Trumpa je možná - a může být překvapivě plodná

Meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump is possible – and could be surprisingly fruitful

Ever since he came to power, after the unexpected death of his father, Kim and his country have been isolated. It is doubtful that he played the nuclear card to wage war, more to demonstrate power. With no peace treaty with the South and distinctly patchy diplomatic connections, you can understand why his aims are security and recognition.

There are times in diplomacy when a proposal is made that seems so implausible, so absurd, that it is dismissed as, at best, extreme kite-flying, at worst a mistake. It may excite a brief flurry of interest, but its fate is generally to be laughed off before being allowed to flicker and die.

That is more or less what happened this week when Donald Trump suggested that he might contemplate a meeting with none other than the West’s current Enemy Number One, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. In an interview with Bloomberg News, the US President actually went a bit further, saying: “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely; I would be honoured to do it.” In a separate interview, he described the man almost universally vilified for threatening nuclear war as a “smart cookie”, essentially for managing to stay in power.

Ridicule and condemnation duly followed. The New York Times reported that Trump was continuing his “outreach to rogue leaders”. The former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, took particular issue with the word “honoured”, describing it as “the wrong way to discuss somebody who is keeping his people in poverty and starving and control”.

And that was pretty much that. If there was any kite-flying – and it can be hard to tell with this President: did he accept that early phone call from Taiwan in order to send a signal or simply because he was unaware of the implications? The suggestion of a summit between Trump and Kim was swiftly slapped down by the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, who put such a meeting very far in the conditional, saying it would depend on North Korea becoming “serious about completely dismantling its nuclear capacity”.

So that all sounds like a no. No meeting, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. But I wonder, is a Trump-Kim meeting quite as implausible as Spicer’s comments made it appear – and, even if it is, should it be?

Zdroj: The Independent - New York

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