Katty Kay: We’ve Put Ourselves in a Worse Position with North Korea

‘Maybe Donald Trump was pausing because he wanted to do something that none of his predecessors had done’

EXCERPT:

KAY: "Maybe Donald Trump was posing because he wanted to do something that none of his predecessors had done and maybe the North Koreans were posing because Kim Jong-un wanted to be able to say to his people, 'Look, I could get the photo opportunity with Donald Trump.' I agree it was a good idea to postpone or even cancel the summit because the conditions for it were not right. The problem is that in the course of the last two months since the summit has been announced we’ve now actually put ourselves in potentially a worse position because the relationship between the South Koreans and the U.S., we're not on the same page. China has been peeled off and the North Koreans have succeeded in doing that. They’ve got Xi Jinping on their side. He is — and when you don’t have a unified bloc, there’s not maximum pressure on North Korea and Pyongyang still has its nuclear weapons. So would we have actually been better not to have gone through the last two months at all and to have carried on just those negotiations that you can, that go on in back channels that we know that every administration has with the North Koreans through back channels, and carried that on without making this big public announcement?”

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