"Diplomacy is surely preferable to war, but the big concern about North Korea is that [President Donald Trump] may be too eager for a 'win,'" tweeted David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. "This isn't 'The Apprentice.' It's not the Art of the Deal. Let's hope someone around him knows the difference!"
In a "total flip," added Ben Rhodes, Obama's "foreign-policy guru," in a characteristically derisive tone, the Republican Party is now for "direct diplomacy with North Korea" and a secretary of state nominee "not informing Congress about it."
So veterans of the Obama administration are skeptical, if not critical, of Trump's diplomatic push to negotiate a settlement to North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. And they are not alone. Democratic lawmakers have also voiced concerns about Trump's planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"Accepting an invitation carries tremendous risk," said Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
"I don't believe it will happen," Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego said of North Korea denuclearizing. "Not because I don't think the president has the right people in place to make it happen, but North Korea has not been a good actor. They do these type of overtures to buy them time and then they take it back."
"For those who like diplomacy but have a sinking feeling about an unplanned, ad hoc Trump/Kim summit," wrote Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, "here's why: the worst case outcome for [the] U.S. is also the most likely—a great, legitimizing photo op for Kim, and no material commitment on disarmament."
Much of this skepticism is actually appropriate. Trump should not be so eager to strike a deal that he agrees to a bad one—in fact, no deal would almost certainly be better than a bad one. North Korea's track record is also quite clear: Pyongyang says it will meet its international obligations, subsequently receives aid and sanctions relief, and then proceeds to break its word, spitting on Washington's overtures. Furthermore, there are legitimate concerns that a Trump-Kim summit will provide the North Korean dictator undeserved legitimacy, with images of him shaking hands with an American president as an equal spreading to billions of computer and television screens. In short, Obama officials and other Democrats (as well as Republicans) are cautioning Trump not to be naïve about negotiating with a rogue regime over its nuclear program.
But let's rewind the tape for a moment.
Where was this skepticism when Obama extended his hand to Iran? One would be hard-pressed to recall officials in the administration and Democrats in Congress expressing the same sentiments, at least publicly, about the forty-fourth president’s relentless pursuit of a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. And Obama's diplomatic push with Iran was far more desperate than Trump's efforts with North Korea.
Obama set the tone of his approach to Iran during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2007, when he offered to meet with Iran's leaders "without preconditions." His primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, called the idea "irresponsible and frankly naïve," before changing course and serving as Obama's chief diplomat. When Obama became president in 2009, his foreign-policy agenda, which appeared on the White House website, also said that he "supports tough and direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions," such as Tehran suspending uranium enrichment. Later in 2009, several media outlets reported that Obama had sent a secret letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, weeks before the disputed Iranian presidential election in June, requesting dialogue and improved relations between Washington and Tehran. (Obama sent at least three subsequent letters to Khamenei while in the White House.)
Then in 2011, the Obama administration secretly began nuclear negotiations with Iran in Oman, belying the administration's false narrative, later orchestrated by Rhodes, that they exploited an opportunity in 2013, when the purportedly "moderate" Hassan Rouhani beat regime "hardliners" to become president, to pursue a nuclear deal. In fact, Iranian officials, including the supreme leader, claimed that Obama at the time approved of Iran's right to operate a nuclear program and recognized its right to enrich uranium—reversing two of Washington's core positions on the matter.
Once nuclear talks became public in 2013, many observers noted how Obama appeared desperate to make a deal with Tehran at all costs. Most notably, Iran's press even called the president "under pressure" to reach an agreement, adding that analysts doubted Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, would be able to walk away from the negotiating table. This desperation led to a deal that, as Henry Kissinger and George Shultz wrote, granted Iran the very thing the U.S. had sought to prevent in negotiations.
"For 20 years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that they were prepared to use force to prevent it," the master diplomats argued in the Wall Street Journal in 2015. "Yet negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years."
The Iranians saw the U.S. as so desperate that they were bold enough at the end of negotiations to demand that the final deal include the lifting of the conventional arms embargo on Iran and the lifting of delivery of ballistic missile components to Iran. The administration, of course, impotently conceded.
Obama's deal not only gave Iran the international community's blessing to build a vast nuclear program, but also legitimized the regime's standing in the world more broadly—results far more devastating than a photo op for Kim, and for which Democrats, except for a few, responded with unending praise.
Throughout the Obama administration's negotiating process with Iran, officials like Rhodes were entirely supportive of "direct diplomacy." They and Democrats did not stress skepticism how they are today about Trump and North Korea. One has to struggle to find examples of Democrats warning that Obama should not be so eager for a diplomatic win. Few if any said that sitting down with the Iranian regime would be risky and help legitimize a cruel theocracy's public image. And Democrats were not so willing to note Iran's history of lying about its international commitments and stonewalling of international inspectors who sought full access to nuclear facilities.
The Obama administration's lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal, Wendy Sherman, warned this week that Trump needs to understand that his definition of "denuclearization"—North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons—is different than Kim's—the U.S. withdrawing from northeast Asia. She added that Pyongyang will only accept an outcome that ensures the North Korean regime's survival, "and if they don't have nuclear weapons, they're pretty scared that they won't survive."
In other words, Trump and Kim have apparently irreconcilable positions. That analysis seems to be correct, but Sherman's implication is that either an agreement will be impossible or Trump will get duped and agree to a bad deal. Sherman herself faced a comparable situation just a few years ago, leading negotiations during which an American president demanded in no uncertain terms an end to a rogue regime's nuclear program altogether, while that regime sought as expansive of a program as practically possible. It is all too clear who won that negotiation. Looking at Trump and North Korea today, perhaps Wendy Sherman and her former colleagues are not the best ones to be giving advice?