Agreeing to this meeting was questionable. It’s something previous presidents have refused to do, and with reason: It’s a concession that demanded something valuable from the other side. Trump has not secured that, and he appears to have acted impulsively. This isn’t encouraging -- but the decision has been made and what matters now is to make the best of it.
That will require Trump to be less like Trump.
His administration deserves credit for marshaling a stringent global sanctions regime that’s taking a real toll on North Korea. His intemperate threats have pushed Chinese leaders into adopting harsher sanctions than they might otherwise have done. Yet Kim also has reason to feel emboldened: He’s won a face-to-face meeting with a sitting U.S. president -- a coup neither his father nor grandfather achieved -- without committing to much beyond a pause in nuclear and missile tests. Trump, impressed to a fault with his own accomplishments, shouldn’t assume his adversary has been cowed.
