Former diplomat fears Trump-Kim summit

The upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “fraught with disaster,” a former high-ranking diplomat said in Honolulu last week.

Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said the meeting will be a prestige bonanza for Kim with little promise of gain for the United States.

But it likely will benefit Trump personally because it would sideline, at least temporarily, other issues, Armitage said, apparently referring to the widening allegations of extramarital sexual contact.

“My enthusiasm is dramatically under control for the ‘bigger button’ meeting that’s allegedly going to take place in May,” he said, referring to Trump’s assertion that he has a bigger nuclear button than the North Koreans. “I think this is fraught with disaster. The reason I say that is, first of all, we’ve not heard a thing from the North Koreans, not officially. Not a word.

“Now, on the one hand I can see — why would Kim Jong Un want to have a word about this? There’s no need to. He can sit back and watch the bodies fall in Washington as the secretary of state gets fired, the national security adviser’s rumored to be fired. Who knows about John Kelly as chief of staff? Why should he speak about anything? He doesn’t know what team he’s gonna be dealing with. He’ll just kinda watch as these, as I say, the bodies fall for a while, and see what comes out of it.”

He spoke Wednesday at the annual banquet of the Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank, at the Sheraton Waikiki. His remarks came a day before Trump announced he would replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

He also said Trump likely does not grasp the complexities of the issues in Northeast Asia.

“The whole situation with North Korea has subtleties, has historical context that must be understood and taken into consideration,” he said. “I’ll have to say that I don’t think our president, thus far, has shown that he’s got the temperament to engage on this kind of unscripted, unrehearsed situation, nor necessarily does he have the willingness to learn.”

He added, “The other side of that is, I’m afraid, this would be, if you think about it, the most watched TV event ever. I think that’s got an attraction for our president because something like that would knock everything else off the headlines, if you get my drift.”

Armitage served as deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. He has served on a number of corporate boards since leaving office.

In June 2016 he announced that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton if Trump became the Republican nominee.

Armitage called China an “adversary,” not an enemy, but expressed misgivings about the move to lift term limits for President Xi Jinping.

“After Mao, China made their own decision: They didn’t want to put all that power in one person’s hand,” he said. “Now they’re going back and concentrating it all in one person’s hand. President for life. I could make the argument some in China make that it is more efficient to have Xi Jinping as president and the only guy who makes the decisions. It’s also dangerous, I think. It’s dangerous because he’ll probably surround himself with yes men. He won’t get the advice he needs to fully understand a problem or a course of action.”

He added, “He doesn’t have much room for error. Having put himself in charge of everything important in China, he’s got nobody to throw under the bus. In the longer view, I think Xi Jinping probably made an error.”

Internationally, China is engaged in “economic aggression,” Armitage said.

“Wherever you look around the world, you will find China engaged in coercive economics.”