Donald Trump's planned summit meeting with Kim Jong Un is still days away but the American president has already stirred things up by warning the North Korean leader of "total decimation," in the way Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi met a gruesome end, "if we don't make a deal." Even if that threat were to frighten Kim into agreeing to a deal, he has no assurance that Trump will keep his end of the bargain. Trump's record, after all, attests to his proclivity to renege on commitments.
In fact, following Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Iran, Kim appears to have got cold feet. This is apparent from Pyongyang's change of tone, including new warnings to the U.S. and South Korea, thereby undercutting the White House hype over the forthcoming Trump-Kim summit in Singapore.
In the run-up to the most-consequential summit of Trump's presidency, the president's Cabinet members are also doing their bit to foolishly stoke up concerns. It was the neoconservative John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, who triggered an angry reaction from Pyongyang by saying that the U.S. wants to apply the "Libya model" to North Korea.