Economics

Trump’s Historic Bet on Kim Summit Shatters Decades of Orthodoxy

Plan to meet marks turnabout after year of Trump-Kim insults
First face-to-face meeting of North Korean and U.S. leaders

Thomas Hubbard, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea and the Philippines, discusses U.S.-North Korea relations.(Source: Bloomberg)

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By Justin Sink, Toluse Olorunnipa, Margaret Talev, and Bill Faries

March 9, 2018 at 3:45 AM UTC

Updated on

March 9, 2018 at 8:41 PM UTC

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Donald Trump took the biggest gamble of his presidency on Thursday, breaking decades of U.S. diplomatic orthodoxy by accepting an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The bet is that Trump’s campaign to apply maximum economic pressure on Kim’s regime has forced him to consider what was previously unthinkable: surrendering the illicit nuclear weapons program begun by his father. If the president is right, the U.S. would avert what appeared at times last year to be a steady march toward a second Korean War.