Six lessons for D.Trump when facing Russia and North Korea

Beginning with the World War II conference in Tehran in 1943, and continuing into the 21st century, US-Russia summits have had some success, but many lessons have also been learned.

US President Donald Trump is scheduled to have a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on June 12 in Singapore. Photo: AP

Lesson One:Personal charisma and persuasion are limited.

To build trust with Soviet leader Josef Stalin, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stayed at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran during the 1943 conference, and praised Stalin at the Yalta conference. However, in both meetings, Stalin achieved the most.

Lesson two:Summits are places to affirm, not change, the realities of power.

Conference participants at Yalta called for a more “diverse” government in Poland, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt later lost faith and hope in free elections because the country remained under Soviet control.

At the 1987 Washington summit, Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned both sides from producing and possessing land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Reeling from domestic crises, Gorbachev agreed to sign the INF in exchange for the United States ending the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) missile defense program that Ronald Reagan had refused to cancel.

Lesson three:Risk increases as relationship deteriorates.

On May 1, 1960, a high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance aircraft disappeared while flying over Russian airspace. Washington claimed that the aircraft, which the US said was for weather research, had deviated from its course.

However, after Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev said that Russian security forces had captured CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was flying the plane nicknamed “Angel,” President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to admit that it was a spy plane. On May 16, at the Paris summit, Khrushchev became angry, causing the conference to collapse and embarrassing Eisenhower.

Lesson Four:For Moscow, it is easier to reach an agreement on arms control than on regional disputes.

Although the INF Treaty was signed at the Washington summit in 1987, both sides were still at odds and deadlocked over the Soviet war in Afghanistan and support for the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In fact, the Kremlin wanted to promote arms control agreements that would put the Soviet Union on a more equal footing with the United States.

Lesson Five:Poor preparation can easily cause meetings to fall apart.

President John F. Kennedy's advisers were concerned that he had not prepared properly for the 1961 Vienna summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Kennedy's credibility had been damaged by the US invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs six weeks earlier.

After the meeting, President Kennedy admitted that he had been “strongly denounced” by Khrushchev. Two months later, the Berlin Wall began to be built. At the 1987 summit in Washington, President Reagan had prepared more carefully, and the meeting not only produced an important treaty but also created an optimistic atmosphere. Both Gorbachev and Reagan gained significant prestige and influence.

Lesson Six:American leaders need to work with Congress.

At the 1974 Moscow summit, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and US President Richard Nixon signed the Preliminary Test Ban Agreement, which limited underground nuclear testing.

The treaty was riddled with loopholes and was vetoed by the US Senate. At the 1979 Vienna summit, Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (SALT II), which was again rejected by the Senate.

US officials are also planning a summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Photo: Getty

President Reagan learned from these failures and in 1985 invited representatives from both houses of Congress to join the arms control monitoring group, a group of officials who regularly attended the nuclear negotiations in Geneva. With the help of these officials, the Senate later unanimously passed the INF and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Some of the above factors could impact the summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The tight timeline and lack of expert-level discussions may leave much to be desired. If a US-North Korea deal requires military concessions from the US, getting it through Congress will not be easy.

Meanwhile, the current strained US-Russia relationship may cloud the prospects for a Trump-Putin summit. If there is any progress from the meeting between the two leaders, it will likely be an agreement to extend the New START Treaty, rather than a treaty to end the war in Ukraine.

Historic achievements such as INF and START were the result of detailed expert-level negotiations, coupled with a determination by leaders to reduce nuclear risks and improve relations. Whether these are top priorities for Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin is unclear./.