![\"Trudy](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/news-p.v1.20260823.fb2c9820688d43288faf642d53d45246_P1.jpg\")
Trudy Rubin <\/p>\n Trudy Rubin <\/p>\n
He\u2019s become world-famous for embracing America\u2019s enemies and backstabbing our allies. Yet, US President Donald Trump outdid himself on Aug. 16 \u2014 on the eve of joint military exercises with South Korea \u2014 when he announced the US was scaling back participation to avoid offending his great friend, the nuclear-armed North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this was just a frantic attempt to shift attention from the quagmire in Iran. Having failed to end Tehran\u2019s nuclear program, the president is offering nuclear talks \u201cwithout preconditions\u201d to Kim.<\/p>\n
The military exercises, Trump said, would be \u201cinappropriate and hostile\u201d to a country that \u201chas been unthreatening and respectful\u201d during his presidency.<\/p>\n
Unthreatening? Respectful? Anything but.<\/p>\n
Kim humiliated Trump after meetings in 2018 and 2019 by rejecting nuclear talks and massively increasing his stock of nuclear weapons and missiles. He has made clear he wants US recognition as a nuclear power, one that threatens South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, as well as US bases and territory.<\/p>\n
Yet, Trump\u2019s selective memory lays bare a terrible truth about our aging, raging president: his unshakeable belief that his \u201cgreat\u201d relations with Kim (and with Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin and China\u2019s Xi Jinping) will ultimately convince them to do his bidding.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s megalomaniacal belief in his own brilliance blinds him to his repeated failures with all three dictators. He refuses to recognize that far from friendship, Kim, Putin and Xi are bound together in an axis of adversaries who are helping a fourth member \u2014 Iran \u2014 stand up to the United States.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s superman delusions aid all these adversaries, even as he dismisses allies who could help keep them in check.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo treat Kim Jong-un as a partner of some kind is absolutely illogical and counterproductive,\u201d I was told by retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, who served for more than three decades in the US Navy, including in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
Montgomery, who is a recognized expert on cyber and technology policy, is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.<\/p>\n
Canceling the South Korea exercises, which Trump said he would have done if it was not too late, decreases US readiness, Montgomery told me, and puts US troops at risk. About 28,500 are based in South Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cKim is not going to give up his nuclear weapon nor is he going to make some kind of deal that will win a Nobel Prize,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In fact, Montgomery added, Trump\u2019s touted first term tete-a-tetes with Kim \u201cmade no impact whatsoever.\u201d Kim increased his nuclear weapons yearly during Trump\u2019s first and second term and is now estimated to have around 50 to 60 nuclear warheads ready for use.<\/p>\n
North Korea is the perfect example of the close ties and fraternal help that the axis powers provide to each other. \u201cRussia has helped North Korea build more accurate intercontinental missiles which can reach much of US territory,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cThis already puts us under threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia has also aided Pyongyang with advanced technology to improve its nuclear and missile programs, which decreases Kim\u2019s willingness to negotiate.<\/p>\n
For his part, the North Korean leader has repaid Russia by sending artillery shells, missiles and tens of thousands of troops to help Putin attack Ukraine. They also work in Russian drone factories, freeing up Russian soldiers to go to the front.<\/p>\n
The man Trump so admires contributes daily to Moscow\u2019s slaughter of civilians in hospitals, schools and apartment buildings in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Putin, the president\u2019s other self-professed buddy, joins axis members in helping the Iranian regime survive and continue to threaten American troops. Iran initially provided Russia with deadly Shahed drones, which Moscow now manufactures and upgrades. Those now-upgraded Iranian drones have killed US troops in Kuwait. Putin also shared intelligence with Tehran that helped the regime target US bases.<\/p>\n
All this has not even touched on the intensified partnership between Moscow and Beijing in which the two primary axis members share technology and intel to jointly undermine US interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe axis has helped Iran. The conflict with Iran ties up the US military and makes us less ready for China, and the Russian attack on Ukraine distracts Europe. And Trump doesn\u2019t see that the threats from North Korea make us less able to defend Taiwan,\u201d Montgomery said.<\/p>\n
Trump is incapable of connecting the dots. Like a sun god at the center of the world, he looks at each adversary through the lens of their relationship to him. He is blind to the links that bind them together.<\/p>\n
The president thinks his personal diplomacy and that of close friends, like fellow real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are superior to normal diplomatic engagement. No expertise is necessary, Montgomery told me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis first term didn\u2019t prove that to be true. It hasn\u2019t moved any of the four axis powers, and it hasn\u2019t moved the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,\u201d he noted. \u201cIt is an integrated task to fight the axis of aggressors. Especially if the president doesn\u2019t recognize who the bad guys are.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, I would add, if those who do recognize the bad guys \u2014like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and many Republican senators \u2014 are more interested in pacifying the president of the United States than in the security of the United States.<\/p>\n
– – –<\/p>\n
Trudy Rubin<\/p>\n
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. \u2014 Ed.<\/p>\n
(Tribune Content Agency)<\/p>\n
khnews@heraldcorp.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trudy Rubin He\u2019s become world-famous for embracing America\u2019s enemies and backstabbing our allies. Yet, US President Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[141,31,34],"class_list":["post-129441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}