Trump seeks to benefit from engaging with friends and foes alike

OPINION:

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend the inauguration on Jan. 20. With this invitation, it appears that Mr. Trump is making it clear that he is prepared to personally engage with adversaries and competitors, as he does with allies and partners.

Mr. Trump did this with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. After a tense 2017, with a policy of “fire and fury,” Mr. Trump met with Mr. Kim in 2018 in Singapore, resulting in a joint statement that spoke of transforming relations with North Korea in return for complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the return of the remains of Americans killed during the Korean War.

The following February 2019 Hanoi Summit ended early when Mr. Kim was not prepared to acknowledge his highly enriched uranium sites for nuclear weapons. That June, however, Mr. Trump visited the Demilitarized Zone and briefly stepped into North Korea — the only sitting president to enter North Korea — followed by a substantive one-hour meeting at Freedom House. Later, Mr. Trump said, “I think meeting here, two countries that have a hostile past, we are showcasing to the world that we have a new present.”

There have been no meetings with North Korea for the past four years. Other national security issues have made North Korea less important. This lack of engagement with North Korea has resulted in a mutual defense treaty with Russia and North Korea providing artillery shells, ballistic missiles and over 11,000 special forces troops to Russia for its war of aggression with Ukraine.

In 2024, North Korea enshrined in its constitution that South Korea and the U.S. were their principal enemies and proceeded to launch dozens of ballistic missiles, including the Hwasong-19, a solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile that can carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles and can target the entire U.S.

Hopefully, the Trump administration will again engage with North Korea to reverse these negative developments.

Taking a page from Mr. Trump’s playbook in his first term, personally engaging with Mr. Xi makes eminent sense. Not only will Mr. Trump be able to discuss issues eroding trust between our two countries, but he will be able to get the departments of State and Defense and other government agencies to engage with China on a multitude of irritants affecting bilateral relations, including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait and intellectual property theft.

The expectation is that Mr. Trump has already crafted a hard policy on China, with tariffs and ensuring that the U.S. has a strong military deterrent. Indeed, China has devoted significant resources to modernizing its military, with a focus on enhancing its nuclear arsenal. Projections suggest that it will have over 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030. A dialogue with Mr. Xi on these and other national security issues would interest both countries.

Also important will be the multitude of global issues for which the U.S. and China can collaborate, such as pandemics, climate change, artificial intelligence, the peaceful use of outer space, nuclear nonproliferation, international crime, counterterrorism and counter-narcotics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. and China effectively collaborated on defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and on counterterrorism and counter-narcotics. This collaboration effectively dealt with these issues and built trust between our two countries.

In his Christmas message, Pope Francis urged “all people of all nations to silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions plaguing the world … calling for broad reconciliation, even with our enemies.” 2025 is a Jubilee Holy Year for the Catholic Church, celebrated every 25 years. It would seem appropriate for Pope Francis during this Jubilee Year to take the initiative to end the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip and facilitate a more substantive dialogue between the U.S. and China.

All indications are that Mr. Trump will be more personally involved in dealing with national security issues and will expect government agencies to be more effective in dealing with these issues.

• Joseph R. DeTrani is the former director of East Asia operations at the CIA, former special envoy for talks with North Korea (2003-2006) and former director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.