Trump-Kim Summit Ends in Impasse and Uncertainty

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump says he still trusts Kim, but needed to 'walk away' from a bad nuclear deal":

Cool front-page photo of #PresidentTrump returning to the White House on Thursday. @LATimes #KAG #ThankYouTrump 👍🇺🇸🙏😎🤙 ⁦@steph93065⁩ pic.twitter.com/JxRYfcSxk0

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 1, 2019

The collapse of President Trump’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un left confusion in its wake Thursday, with each side blaming the other and no clear path forward in the nuclear standoff.

As Trump flew home from Hanoi, site of the abbreviated gathering, a growing outcry erupted in the United States over Trump’s defense of Kim in the 2017 death of American college student Otto Warmbier, whose family said he suffered brutal torture while imprisoned in North Korea.

But despite the president returning empty-handed, Trump’s political allies praised what they called his acumen in walking away rather than accepting a bad deal, and some analysts cited early signs that North Korea still wanted to keep open the lines of communication.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor to declare that Trump had made the right call.

“High-level diplomacy can carry high-level risks, but the president is to be commended for walking away when it became clear insufficient progress had been made on denuclearization,” McConnell said.

Trump cut short his summit with Kim earlier Thursday, rejecting the North Korean leader’s offer to dismantle a major nuclear complex in exchange for the removal of U.S.-led economic sanctions.

Trump said that the U.S. wanted more concessions from Kim and that talks would continue. But the president wouldn’t commit to holding a third summit after two high-profile meetings have failed to produce a concrete agreement on rolling back Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said at a news conference in the Vietnamese capital before departing for Washington on Air Force One. “This was one of those times.”

Less than 12 hours later, a North Korean official took the rare step of holding a news conference to tell reporters: Kim made a “realistic proposal,” and it was the U.S. that was obstinate in its demands.

In a Hanoi hotel lobby after midnight, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said North Korea had proposed dismantling its main nuclear complex and permanently halting all nuclear and long-range missile testing in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions, but the U.S. was “not ready to accept our proposal.”

“Our principal stand will remain invariable and our proposal will never be changed,” he said.

“This proposal was the biggest denuclearization measure we can take at the present stage in relation to the current level of confidence between the DPRK and the United States,” Ri said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In response to Ri's comments, a senior U.S. official said early Friday that while the North Korean delegation did not seek the lifting of all sanctions, it wanted to remove enough to gut the "maximum pressure" campaign of squeezing the country’s economy. The relaxation of sanctions would have freed government funds for more weapons development, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with State Department rules for speaking about negotiations.

"So to give many, many billions of dollars in sanctions relief would in effect put us in a position of subsidizing the ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction in North Korea," the administration official told reporters traveling with Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo. "Now, they didn’t ask us to do that, but that is effectively the choice that we were presented with. "

As Trump flew home via Alaska, where he briefly addressed troops during a refueling stop at Elmendorf Air Force Base, even some supporters expressed dismay over Trump’s about-face on Warmbier, the 22-year-old who was held for 17 months by North Korea and died shortly after being returned home in a vegetative state.

At the time, the president decried Pyongyang’s “cruel dictatorship,” and had the student’s parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, as guests at his 2018 State of the Union address...

Why a U.S.-Chinese War Could Spiral Out of Control

From Professor Caitlin Talmadge, at Foreign Affairs, "Beijing’s Nuclear Option":

.@ProfTalmadge warns that the U.S. and China’s conventional military styles could put the two countries on a nuclear collision course.https://t.co/Alu38io7Tb

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) December 7, 2018

As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the risk of war with the United States. Under President Xi Jinping, China has increased its political and economic pressure on Taiwan and built military installations on coral reefs in the South China Sea, fueling Washington’s fears that Chinese expansionism will threaten U.S. allies and influence in the region. U.S. destroyers have transited the Taiwan Strait, to loud protests from Beijing. American policymakers have wondered aloud whether they should send an aircraft carrier through the strait as well. Chinese fighter jets have intercepted U.S. aircraft in the skies above the South China Sea. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has brought long-simmering economic disputes to a rolling boil.

A war between the two countries remains unlikely, but the prospect of a military confrontation—resulting, for example, from a Chinese campaign against Taiwan—no longer seems as implausible as it once did. And the odds of such a confrontation going nuclear are higher than most policymakers and analysts think.

Members of China’s strategic com­munity tend to dismiss such concerns. Likewise, U.S. studies of a potential war with China often exclude nuclear weapons from the analysis entirely, treating them as basically irrelevant to the course of a conflict. Asked about the issue in 2015, Dennis Blair, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, estimated the likelihood of a U.S.-Chinese nuclear crisis as “somewhere between nil and zero.”

This assurance is misguided. If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional warfare would be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power.

China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional military forces, making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal. Faced with such a threat, Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to.

As U.S. and Chinese leaders navigate a relationship fraught with mutual suspicion, they must come to grips with the fact that a conventional war could skid into a nuclear confrontation. Although this risk is not high in absolute terms, its consequences for the region and the world would be devastating. As long as the United States and China continue to pursue their current grand strategies, the risk is likely to endure. This means that leaders on both sides should dispense with the illusion that they can easily fight a limited war. They should focus instead on managing or resolving the political, economic, and military tensions that might lead to a conflict in the first place.

A NEW KIND OF THREAT

There are some reasons for optimism. For one, China has long stood out for its nonaggressive nuclear doctrine. After its first nuclear test, in 1964, China largely avoided the Cold War arms race, building a much smaller and simpler nuclear arsenal than its resources would have allowed. Chinese leaders have consistently characterized nuclear weapons as useful only for deterring nuclear aggression and coercion. Historically, this narrow purpose required only a handful of nuclear weapons that could ensure Chinese retaliation in the event of an attack. To this day, China maintains a “no first use” pledge, promising that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

The prospect of a nuclear conflict can also seem like a relic of the Cold War. Back then, the United States and its allies lived in fear of a Warsaw Pact offensive rapidly overrunning Europe. NATO stood ready to use nuclear weapons first to stalemate such an attack. Both Washington and Moscow also consistently worried that their nuclear forces could be taken out in a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear strike by the other side. This mutual fear increased the risk that one superpower might rush to launch in the erroneous belief that it was already under attack. Initially, the danger of unauthorized strikes also loomed large. In the 1950s, lax safety procedures for U.S. nuclear weapons stationed on NATO soil, as well as minimal civilian oversight of U.S. military commanders, raised a serious risk that nuclear escalation could have occurred without explicit orders from the U.S. president.

The good news is that these Cold War worries have little bearing on U.S.-Chinese relations today. Neither country could rapidly overrun the other’s territory in a conventional war. Neither seems worried about a nuclear bolt from the blue. And civilian political control of nuclear weapons is relatively strong in both countries. What remains, in theory, is the comforting logic of mutual deterrence: in a war between two nuclear powers, neither side will launch a nuclear strike for fear that its enemy will respond in kind.

The bad news is that one other trigger remains: a conventional war that threatens China’s nuclear arsenal...

Keep reading.

And see, Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, at International Security, "Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, U.S. AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia."

Graham T. Allison, Destined for War

At Amazon, Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?

Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

At Amazon, Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.

Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire

I'm posting a bunch of new books as suggestions for under the Christmas tree.

Thanks for your support!

At Amazon, Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750.

Laura Ingraham on the Left's Reaction to President Donald Trump North Korea Nuclear Breakthrough (VIDEO)

I just don't watch much cable news these days, so I missed on the idiot commentary denouncing Donald Trump's meeting with Kim Jong Un, and I'm glad. Laura Ingraham rounds up some of these talking heads, and this is reminds me of exactly why I don't tune in. The news has changed so dramatically in, say, 20 years. I used to be a reliable viewer of CNN, and that's up to just a couple of years ago. But it's no long news but partisan cheerleading, and it's not worth my time. I don't even watch Fox News, except for these videos I post from time to time.

In any case, this is good. I didn't blog yesterday because I had all kinds of health appointments for my wife and I, and my young son, who's getting behavioral therapy to help with his ASD.

More on that later. Meanwhile, here's Ms. Laura:

Dana Loesch: The U.S. Keeps Winning Under Trump Administration's Foreign Policy (VIDEO)

This is great. It's all great. Democrats are not great, of course, and they're hating it.

Trump Administration Announces $60 Billion in Tariffs on Chinese Imports

This is big.

And with a long list of exemptions for European and other allies, it's looking to be a focused trade war with China.

At the New York Times:

#Trump Hits #China With Stiff Trade Measures. https://t.co/rRh84qFeko

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 23, 2018

The risk of a trade war is testing China's president. His first response: a threat to retaliate with tariffs on $3 billion in U.S. goods. https://t.co/CGuc4B8B1R

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 23, 2018

China announced that it would impose tariffs on $3 billion worth of American-produced goods, hours after President Trump imposed tariffs on as much as $60 billion worth of Chinese goods https://t.co/6XAeTtGzq0

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 23, 2018

Doesn't Kim Jong Un Understand 'Suicidal'?

If Kim wants to play gamesmanship, I think the U.S. should show him who's boss.

At the Asia Times, "North Korea: Doesn’t Kim Jong Un understand ‘suicidal’?":

American officials and commentators often say it will be “suicide” if Kim Jong Un tries something. That something is usually unclear but at the rate Kim is launching missiles he appears to think he’s got plenty of leeway before he does something suicidal.

The North Koreans wouldn’t be the first to miscalculate what suicidal is.

It was suicidal for the Japanese to attack the Americans and British in 1941, in retrospect, at least. But at the time, it seemed like a reasonable idea.

It was suicidal for Hitler to attack Russia, especially when over half the German invasion force’s transport was horse-drawn. But at the time it didn’t seem so.

The United States invading Iraq without a plan for what to do once Baghdad was captured? It might not have been suicidal, but was at least the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building onto an asphalt parking lot, repeatedly.

So consider things from Kim’s perspective as he looks over the last 30 years. No matter what he and his father and grandfather did they’ve never been painfully punished.

At various times, the Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and others have given the Kim’s food, money, oil, and atomic reactors – all in exchange for a promise to talk or behave better. Keeping the promises was optional.

And when the Kim regime has acted out – blowing up the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon, torpedoing a South Korean Navy ship, kidnapping Japanese citizens, launching missiles, building and testing nuclear weapons, poisoning a half-brother in broad daylight in a crowded airport terminal?

Why … nothing much happened.

After the South Korean vessel was sunk the Americans even pressured Seoul to do nothing. And China helpfully insisted at the UN that it was unclear who fired the torpedo.

China – the one country that can economically “turn off” North Korea – has kept the Kim’s afloat, protected them politically, and helped with their nuclear and missile programs.

This continues and includes pressuring South Korea over its THAAD missile defense system and strong-arming South Korean companies operating in China. But it’s not just Beijing.

The Kim regime maintains a gulag that a Korean Solzhenitsyn will someday write about. Yet 164 nations have diplomatic relations with North Korea.

And a number of them accept North Korean “forced” labor and allow the regime’s licit and illicit money making operations to continue.

The United States has had a curious approach towards North Korea. It maintains military forces on the peninsular and is committed to defending South Korea – while often displaying naivety and incompetence on the diplomatic front...

Still more.

And at Politico, "Trump threatens to 'stop all trade' with any country doing business with North Korea."

Anna Kooiman in South Korea (VIDEO)

I saw her on Twitter this morning.

And here's the video from Fox & Friends:

Trump's Dropping Bombs at Unprecedented Levels

Notice how leftists are just now getting worried about the expansion of executive power in national security? Never mind that Obama usurped literally dictatorial powers as Commander-in-Chief. Nope. Now it's all about how Trump's bombing our enemies at "unprecedented" levels, and even that Trump's nuclear brinkmanship is that of a "madman."

Yep, these leftist clowns are out of control.

At far-left Foreign Policy, "The candidate who once warned America about Hillary Clinton's hawkishness is turning into a war machine":

Throughout the 2016 campaign, many people opposed to Donald Trump’s candidacy were nonetheless reluctant to endorse Hillary Clinton, in part because of her relative hawkishness. Candidate Trump had a decades-long career in the public eye that demonstrated plenty of reason to worry he would be a disastrous president, but he lacked the long career in public service that fueled worries about Clinton’s approach to the use of force, and her alleged desire to expand executive war-making powers past what she inherited from her predecessor.

Six months into Trump’s presidency, we now have enough data to assess his own approach. The results are clear: Judging from Trump’s embrace of the use of air power — the signature tactic of U.S. military intervention — he is the most hawkish president in modern history. Under Trump, the United States has dropped about 20,650 bombs through July 31, or 80 percent the number dropped under Obama for the entirety of 2016. At this rate, Trump will exceed Obama’s last-year total by Labor Day.

In Iraq and Syria, data shows that the United States is dropping bombs at unprecedented levels. In July, the coalition to defeat the Islamic State (read: the United States) dropped 4,313 bombs, 77 percent more than it dropped last July. In June, the number was 4,848 — 1,600 more bombs than were dropped in any one month under President Barack Obama since the anti-ISIS campaign started three years ago.

In Afghanistan, the number of weapons released has also shot up since Trump took office. April saw more bombs dropped in the country since the height of Obama’s troop surge in 2012. That was also the month that the United States bombed Afghanistan’s Mamand Valley with the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat.

Trump has also escalated U.S. military involvement in non-battlefield settings — namely Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. In the last 193 days of the Obama presidency, there were 21 lethal counterterrorism operations across these three countries. Trump has quintupled that number, conducting at least 92 such operations in Yemen, seven in Somalia, and four in Pakistan.

Hand in hand with Trump’s enthusiasm for air power comes a demonstrated tolerance for civilian casualties. Increased air power in Iraq and Syria has resulted in unprecedented levels of civilian deaths. Even by the military’s own count, civilian casualties have soared since Trump took office, though independent monitors tally the deaths as many as ten times higher. In Afghanistan, Trump’s tolerance for killing civilians has led to 67 percent more civilian casualties in his first six months than in the first half of 2016, according to the United Nations.

The expansion of air power and acceptance of civilian harm are together a problem, but they are made worse by the fact that they are occurring without any diplomatic strategy to wind down the wars...

More (FWIW).

Trumpian Fury on North Korea

At WSJ, "China needs to know that the threat of military action is real":

When Donald Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” Tuesday if it continues to menace the U.S. with nuclear weapons, he provoked almost as much backlash at home as in Pyongyang. The usual diplomatic suspects, including some American lawmakers, claimed his remarks hurt U.S. credibility and were irresponsible.

The President’s point was that the North’s escalating threats are intolerable; he didn’t set any red lines. True to form, Pyongyang responded by putting the U.S. island of Guam in its cross hairs. Mr. Trump may be guilty of hyperbole (quelle surprise), but that is far less damaging to U.S. credibility than Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his prohibition on the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria. The foreign-policy elite who claim to be shocked also don’t have much credibility after their policy across three Administrations led to the current North Korean danger.

While the President’s words were unusually colorful, the Communist-style language may have been part of the message: Kim Jong Un isn’t the only one who can raise the geopolitical temperature. The U.S. has military options to neutralize the regime’s nuclear threat if it continues to develop long-range missiles, and the U.S. is considering those options.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said as much in an interview Saturday, explaining that Pyongyang’s nuclear threat is “intolerable from the President’s perspective. So of course, we have to provide all options to do that. And that includes a military option.” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reinforced that message Wednesday, warning North Korea to stop acting in ways that could “lead to the end of its regime.”

Last week Senator Lindsey Graham told a morning television program, “There is a military option to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself.” The South Carolina Republican revealed that Mr. Trump told him there will be war if the North continues to develop long-range missiles: “He has told me that. I believe him. If I were China, I would believe him, too, and do something about it.”

The China reference is a tip-off that the main audience for this rhetorical theater is in Beijing. Kim Jong Un won’t stop now that he’s so close to his goal of a nuclear deterrent. But China might restrict the flow of oil to the North, for example, if it believes that stronger action on its part could forestall a U.S. pre-emptive strike...

More.

Thanks to Democrats, President Trump is Facing an Increasingly Dangerous Rogue North Korea (VIDEO)

Following-up here, "Technical Challenges to a Successful Nuclear Strike," and "Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma."

Here's Sean Hannity:

Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma

Following-up from my previous entry, "Technical Challenges to a Successful Nuclear Strike."

This is the must-have introductory textbook on the topic.

At Amazon, Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma: An Introduction to the American Experience.

Technical Challenges to a Successful Nuclear Strike

From longtime tech correspondent Ralph Vartabedian, at LAT, "North Korea has made a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile. How worried should the world be?":

Before the age of compact cars, laptop computers and pocket telephones, there were miniature nuclear warheads.

For as long as there have been engineers, they have been working on making complicated things smaller and better. Weapons are no exception.

Now, North Korea apparently has figured out how to make a very big explosive small enough to sit atop one of its mobile-launched missiles, a development that could threaten much of the U.S., according to a U.S. intelligence report that surfaced this week.

North Korea is making progress, showing it can put together competent teams of scientists and solve technical problems, but it is far from proving that it is capable of launching a punishing nuclear strike on the U.S., according to U.S. weapons experts.

Making a miniature nuclear weapon that has a large explosive force involves a lot of scientific and engineering know-how.

The “Little Boy” bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 9, 1945, weighed as much as two 2017 Cadillac Escalade SUVs, about 9,700 pounds. Three days later, the “Fat Man” bomb, slightly heavier at 10,300 pounds, was dropped on Nagasaki.

Since then, the weight of U.S. atomic bombs has shrunk considerably, as scientists have refined the physics of the devices and streamlined how they are armed.

With the last generation of nuclear weapons designed in the 1980s, engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory produced the W88, weighing only 800 pounds despite having an explosive force equal to 475,000 tons of TNT — in other words, less than one-tenth the weight of the first atomic bomb, but 400 times more powerful.

What technical capability is necessary to build a missile-ready nuclear bomb?

The first step is understanding how to reduce the amount of conventional high explosives that surround a hollow pit of highly enriched uranium or plutonium. A nuclear detonation occurs when the high explosive implodes the hollow sphere of fissile material next to it to start an uncontrolled chain reaction.

After the war, work progressed on smaller bombs. One of the crucial design steps was to create a small, precisely uniform air gap between the conventional explosives and the sphere of nuclear fuel, amplifying the force of the conventional explosion and reducing the amount needed to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.

It’s unclear that Pyongyang has mastered that precise construction, said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons analyst with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.

What Pyongyang has said so far is that its weapon is a “Korean-style mixed charge” device, indicating “they don’t have a lot of plutonium, so they are mixing it with uranium,” Lewis said.

It is possible the North Koreans are also injecting tritium gas into the hollow sphere to get some fusion energy out of the bomb, as well, he said...

More.

Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa.

Otto Warmbier Has Died

This makes me sad and angry.

I generally don't "hate," but I hate North Korea. I wish the boy never went there in the first place.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Otto Warmbier, the American released by North Korea last week, has died":

Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was in a coma when he was released by North Korea, has died in Ohio. He was 22.

His family said in a statement that Warmbier died Monday afternoon.

The family thanked the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for treating him but said, “Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.”

Otto Warmbier was held for 17+ months in North Korea. Doctors said he returned with severe brain damage https://t.co/fcoM9CVM32 pic.twitter.com/8ZycvYHFeX

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 19, 2017

Oh my god. https://t.co/DPevP6UgeV

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 19, 2017

God damn it, Obama. This is on you. https://t.co/oTMRfRSWmE

— Kim Priestap (@kimpriestap) June 19, 2017

Statement issued by the family of #ottowarmbier on his passing pic.twitter.com/0loUSdBmrM

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) June 19, 2017

Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations

This is really shocking piece, considering how nonchalant everybody is about spying and intelligence these days. All this hacking and leaking and political payback can get you killed. A lot of people are getting killed.

At NYT, with the response at Zero Hedge:

Killing @CIA Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations, rivaling if not worse than Ames/Hanssen betrayals https://t.co/U22mdiTTvt

— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanNYT) May 20, 2017

CIA Incompetence Allowed China To Murder A Dozen CIA Assets: NYT https://t.co/tYmMeSI5NS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 20, 2017

Journalist Goes Undercover in North Korea (PHOTOS)

At London's Daily Mail.

No photos of concentration camps (complaints about this on Twitter). But still, it's an amazing, excellent photo-essay:

Journalist goes undercover to capture a side of North Korea we rarely get to see https://t.co/YBDCKGakf1

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) April 14, 2017

Trump Open to Shift on Russia Sanctions, 'One China' Policy

At WSJ:

Trump suggests in WSJ interview he'd be open to lifting Russia sanctions and isn't committed to "One China" policy https://t.co/B1XXF7ONEF

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 14, 2017

NEW YORK—President-elect Donald Trump suggested he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia and wasn’t committed to a longstanding agreement with China over Taiwan—two signs that he would use any available leverage to realign the U.S.’s relationship with its two biggest global strategic rivals.

In an hourlong interview, Mr. Trump said that, “at least for a period of time,” he would keep intact sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration in late December in response to Moscow’s alleged cyberattacks to influence November’s election. But he suggested he might do away with those penalties if Russia proved helpful in battling terrorists and reaching other goals important to the U.S.

“If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?” he said.

He also said he wouldn’t commit to America’s agreement with China that Taiwan wasn’t to be recognized diplomatically, a policy known as “One China,” until he saw what he considered progress from Beijing in its currency and trade practices.

The desire to change relations with Moscow in particular has been a goal of American presidents since tensions began rising under President Vladimir Putin’s leadership. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought the same goal early in the Obama administration, as did President George W. Bush, who met Mr. Putin early in his first term.

But Mr. Trump’s diplomatic efforts will have to compete with those in Congress, including many Republicans, who want to see the administration take a tough line with Russia after U.S. intelligence concluded that the government of Mr. Putin sought to influence the November presidential election with a campaign of cyberhacking.

Additionally, an unsubstantiated dossier of political opposition research suggesting ties between Mr. Trump and Russia was published this past week—drawing condemnation from Mr. Trump and his team but keeping Russian espionage in the spotlight. The allegations haven’t been validated by the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Mr. Trump in the interview suggested he might do away with the Obama administration’s Russian sanctions, and he said he is prepared to meet with Mr. Putin some time after he is sworn in.

“I understand that they would like to meet, and that’s absolutely fine with me,” he said.

Asked if he supported the One China policy on Taiwan, Mr. Trump said: “Everything is under negotiation including One China.”

China has considered Taiwan a breakaway province since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists set up a government there in 1949, after years of civil war. Washington’s agreement to rescind diplomatic recognition of the government in Taiwan and uphold a One China policy was a precondition for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between U.S. and China in 1979. Any suggestion in the past that the U.S. may change its stance has been met with alarm in Beijing.

On Saturday, a statement posted on the Chinese foreign ministry’s website said, “There is but one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”

It added, “we urge relevant parties in the U.S. to fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan question, approach Taiwan-related issues with prudence and honor the commitment made by all previous U.S. administrations.”

Though he has long been critical of China, Mr. Trump on Friday also made a point of showing a holiday greeting card he received from China’s leader, Xi Jinping...

More.