Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump Is Not Nixon and North Korea Is Not China

The key difference from Beijing in 1972: After any summit, North Korea will remain a weak client state.

April 20, 2018 at 9:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon in Beijing in 1972.
Source: AFP/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

If you Google "Trump," "Nixon" and "China," you will find billions of pixels devoted to comparing the 37th president's breakthrough with Beijing to the potential summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

The parallel is understandable. It took a committed anti-communist to open relations with Communist China. Perhaps it will take a president who threatened "fire and fury" to open ties to the leader he called "little rocket man." In 1972 when Mao Zedong hosted President Richard Nixon in Beijing, Communist China suffered severe international isolation in much the way North Korea does today. Like Mao, Kim espouses a harsh collectivism that imposes misery, famine and death on his people.