President Donald Trump has long regarded personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as one of the greatest foreign policy successes of his first term and recently signaled that he wants to meet with Kim again. To facilitate this, he ordered the Pentagon to scale back last month’s joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost and Pyongyang’s longtime opposition to the drills.The president’s impulse is understandable. Trump’s personal diplomacy during his first term significantly lowered tensions with North Korea. There has been no North Korean nuclear test since 2017, a pause in long-range missile launches, and a window of relative calm on the peninsula.
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