Trump Should Be More Worried

The size of Trump's Senate did not impress Kim Jong-un. In fact, it seems that while Americans were still voting on Tuesday, Pyongyang's senior negotiator Kim Yong-chol ghosted on the flight to President Mike Pompeo in New York. At midnight, the State Department issued a statement saying that the meeting was off, but conversations were ongoing. That did not stop President Trump from insisting on his postelection press conference on Wednesday that he would meet with his counterpart again in the new year. "We're very happy with how it's going with North Korea," Trump added. "We think it's going fine."

Observers had already been predicting that U.S.-North Korea would be close to going off track, and Pompeo and Kim Yong-chol would have nothing to offer at the New York meeting. The core problem has not changed since the Trump-Kim Singapore summit in June. Washington wants North Korea to take verifiable steps towards disarmament, with a peace treaty and progress on penalties removal as rewards. The North wants a peace agreement, sanctions removal, Then disarmament – and it wants disarmament to be mutual.

Given the size of that gap, why is Trump happy? In his own words, "The sanctions are on. The missiles have stopped, the rockets have stopped. Except, while the North has stopped testing missiles, it is still developing them. And as for the sanctions, China and Russia are openly skirting them. South Korea is moving towards its fourth summit meeting with the North this year, and exploring possible cooperation in areas like infrastructure, which would be prohibited under the existing sanctions regime.

It seems that Washington has two choices. It could come up with innovations and compromises that would move the negotiations forward, possibly gaining more access to the North's weapons program, even if comprehensive disarmament remains out of reach. Or it can let the process fail and return to the threats of "fire and fury" that dominated 2017.

But Trump seems to think it's a third way: that's his personal relationship with Kim Jong-un is enough to keep things chill and North Korea's nuclear advances will not come so fast, or be so noticeable, as to political cause turbulence at home . Now that the midterms are over, we're going to find out if he's right. Republicans losing the House puts an effective end to Trump's legislative agenda, and presidents stymied in Congress often turn to foreign affairs as an alternative outlet.

For the moment, several nations appear to be ahead of North Korea on the White House "fire and fury" list. The administration's sanctions are biting Tehran, and hard-liners there will want to respond; it will become clearer that Europe can not implement a work-around to let Iran keep the economic benefits of the 2015 nuclear deal, security tensions will likely escalate.

Meanwhile, last week National Security Adviser John Bolton gave a fiery speech lumping Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela together as an alleged "troika of tyranny" threatening U.S. security. Because both Nicaragua and Venezuela are avowedly socialist, and receive economic aid from Cuba, the Trump administration has made them a first-tier ideological threat – but they are mainly harming their own citizens. Ninety percent of Venezuelans are now living in poverty, and the combination of hunger and political unrest has driven 2.3 million out of the country. Only Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan have wider refugee crises. Six months of protests and repression in Nicaragua have left the dead and injured, and the economy in ruins. Bolton's speech was an attempt at conservative conservative Cuban-Americans to vote in the midterms, rather than a new policy advance. However, it was allegedly ratcheting up its rhetoric on Venezuela, and it's allegedly conducting secret talks with opposing groups about military intervention.

Secretary of Defense Mattis is now at pains to give the impression that he wants the US military to focus on its great power rivals Russia and China – and the Pentagon was quick, the day after the election, to announce that it had dropped " Faithful Patriot "for Trump's much-criticized in Syria. Several weeks ago, the Washington rumor mill suggests Mattis would be the first out of the door after the midterms. But then the counter-rumors began, saying it was a plot by Bolton and his deputy Mira Ricardel to the Defense Secretary. Trump hit lists, but that could not change.

With so much on its plate, its no surprise that the Trump administration seems to let North Korea bump along for the time being. Historically, though, Pyongyang does not like to let others dictate the pace of events, and it tends to force the way out. The canceled New York meeting is likely to be one in a series of unpleasant choices.