Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Pyongyang and North Korea’s announcement of new missile tests have raised alarm bells in Washington, shocking US allies and threatening to destabilize the entire Indo-Pacific region.
While this is certainly not the first time tensions have risen, the current unrest can be attributed to the actions of one man: former US President Donald Trump.
During his presidency, Trump’s attempts at diplomacy were often seen as ill-informed and dangerous, particularly when he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un exchanged nuclear threats in 2017. Yet Trump and Kim, who met for two summits in 2018 and 2019, actually made significant progress toward resolving the decades-old conflict between their two countries — until Trump’s impulsiveness derailed those efforts and set the stage for escalation.
