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North Korea, explained.
Donald Trump has ratings in the 30s (Molly Riley/Official White House Photo)
With midterm elections looming, diplomacy as advertorial can play to the president’s strengths.
Trump wants a made-for-TV summit – but Kim Jong-un will decide the ratingsTrump wants a made-for-TV summit – but Kim Jong-un will decide the ratings
For most of his second term, it seemed like Donald Trump had all but forgotten about East Asia.
Most of his foreign policy ambitions have wandered between the Atlantic and the Persian Gulf. He continues to pitch himself to his domestic supporters as the dealmaker-in-chief. Now, weeks out from the 2026 midterms, with popularity for his war in Iran and support for his leadership both hovering in the low 30s (Opens in new window), he is seeking out new opportunities.
Here enters North Korea.
In the past two weeks, Trump has abruptly cut back (Opens in new window) joint exercises with South Korea, floated (Opens in new window) another summit with Kim Jong-un, and is repeating his line that only his personal relationship with Kim can pull North Korea back from the brink.
Meanwhile, the North Koreans have acknowledged no such breakthrough (Opens in new window). Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un, nodded to Trump’s “excellent” relationship with her brother but rejected the idea that cutting the exercises represented goodwill to the regime. Hours later, North Korea fired missiles (Opens in new window) to remind the world of their place on the stage.
At first glance, this looks like a reprise of Trump’s 2018–19 summit theatre. He has long had a fondness for flashy meetings with other world leaders, particularly the ones deemed untouchable by the West. He hawked his Singapore meeting with Kim – and later in Hanoi and on the border in the DMZ – as evidence that only he could bring North Korea to the table.
The effort failed because Trump never understood the working theory of the North Korean regime, to operate on cycles of escalation and diplomacy, the wavelengths just enough to allow geopolitical amnesia to set in. His taste for spectacle overrode any real attempt to bring safety to the region.
Kim and Trump at the DMZ (Shealah Craighead/Official White House Photo)
But the question now becomes why Trump wants to reprise his summitry right now?
The answer lies in the unrelenting US political calendar. Most countries take for granted the fallow periods in which campaign politics are not dominant. The money and media of the American political system require a 24/7 campaign to sustain itself.
November’s midterms will decide the extent of Trump’s power in the remaining two years of his presidency. He has done everything in his power to make this vote a referendum on his leadership. Nearly every Republican candidate is running explicitly on the message that they will be the best fighter for Trump’s agenda – even when that surpasses their own knowledge of foreign policy, as shown last week with Senator Darline Graham’s comments (Opens in new window) that her voters were far more interested in the small handful of trans athletes than they were with Taiwan – this, in a state whose economy is dependent on US military spending and ocean-bound trade.
In such a referendum, Trump’s popularity is important. Iran has become a grinding liability. Ukraine and Gaza remain unresolved, if faded from the headlines. Trump’s own approval sits at 33%, one point lower than Trump’s previous record in the week after the 6 January insurrection.
The money and media of the American political system require a 24/7 campaign to sustain itself.
Trump had imagined (Opens in new window) a war in Iran to be swift, a second step in a campaign that first saw the kidnap of Venezuela’s president, only to be replaced by an equally brutal leader whose only change to a dictatorial regime is to send oil revenues northward to the United States. Instead, the war in Iran has bogged Trump’s foreign agenda and become an oily albatross around his neck, imposing daily political and economic costs on him.
The political value of a visible diplomatic success is rising quickly as the opportunity for substantive success becomes scarce. A new summit with Kim offers Trump an aesthetic victory that he can control – a televised ad for his vision of himself as peacemaker.
The 2018 summitry offers confidence here. 46% of Americans said (Opens in new window) that the summit in Singapore made Trump look stronger. That support helped Trump to defy political odds in that year’s midterms, with Republicans gaining two seats in the Senate.
However, 38% said (Opens in new window) that North Korea gained more from the meetings. The average American voter is a contradictory animal. They thought that North Korea got the better deal and that Trump looked stronger.
In the eight years since that summit, Kim has learned how to play the game. His partnership with Russia, underwritten with the blood of North Korean troops on the frontline of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has enabled new financial workarounds that have rendered inert (Opens in new window) many of the Western sanctions against the North Korean regime. China, for its part, has restored trade and expanded cooperation. The incentives that the United States must make demands of North Korea have weakened.
Kim is aware of that. In 2018, Kim needed something of Trump. In 2026, Trump needs Kim to participate in the spectacle.
Pyongyang is signalling that it wants the US to accept its status as a nuclear power, and to reduce South Korea’s capacity to call on American military support. Many on South Korea’s left see this as a good and meaningful step toward de-escalation with the North. But they argue that it should be managed negotiation rather than abrupt and one-sided showmanship.
As the Turkish journalist Aslı Aydıntaşbaş told Reuters (Opens in new window), adversaries understand that Trump’s “political clock is shorter than theirs”, that they can afford to wait for Washington to lose patience and strike a more favourable deal.
About the author
Cory Alpert
Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne, where he studies the impact of AI on democracy. Previously, he served in the Biden White House for three years and as the senior adviser to Mayor Steve Benjamin.
