Trump was out of his depth in Hanoi. This failure is his greatest flop yet | Simon Tisdall
(The Guardian North Korea)

The blunderer-in-chief has let North Korea´s dictator emerge unscathed over his regime´s appalling human rights abusesDonald Trump´s self-reverential style of personalised, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants diplomacy just crashed and burned in Hanoi. It is fitting, perhaps, that Vietnam - scene of past American humiliations - was the setting for the blunderer-in-chief´s greatest flop. Trump tried to wing it in nuclear talks with North Korea´s more canny leader, Kim Jong-un, and got what he deserved: precisely nothing. The summit, like last year´s effort in Singapore, was a Trump vanity project - and proved a labour in vain.In principle just about everybody, including close neighbours South Korea, China and Russia, would like to see North Korea´s nuclear arsenal brought under international supervision, and preferably eliminated altogether. To make such a mess of things, given this exceptional consensus, is a true measure of Trump´s incomparable incompetence. Yet this is barely a surprise. It is entirely of a piece with his amateurish approach to key foreign policy challenges the world over. Related: The Hanoi summit collapse reaffirms Trump`s amateur hour in diplomacy | Michael H Fuchs Related: The art of the no deal: how Trump and Kim misread each other | Julian Borger Continue reading...