NORTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Midway through the press conference after his summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump offered his basic argument for why this effort at diplomacy with Pyongyang will succeed where so many others have failed: ‘This is a much different time, and this is a much different president,’ Mr. Trump said. As that suggests, the prospects for turning Tuesday’s [6-12-18] vague agreement into lasting change on the Korean Peninsula hinge on two new factors in the equation. The first is the calculation that Mr. Kim represents not just a younger North Korean leader but a wholly different one prepared to shift his country’s strategic goal away from a quest for more powerful arms into a quest for a more powerful economy. The gamble, in short, is that this is a different time because the young Mr. Kim rather than his father or grandfather is running the show in Pyongyang. The second calculation is that it is possible to turn the normal process of reaching significant international agreements on its head. Normally, leaders have their subordinates carefully work out details of big deals beforehand, ensuring that their countries are in agreement before the leaders personally expose their reputations and run the risks that come with shaking hands on a big world stage.”
-Gerald F. Seib, “The Risky Calculus of the Trump-Kim Embrace,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2018 5:57 pm