President Trump assures Americans regularly that he has a “great relationship” with an array of world figures, among them Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. It’s comforting to hear. It would be more gratifying, though, to see these relationships bear fruit. Try as he might, the president has been stymied in his efforts to seal crucial deals with his Asian counterparts. Mr. Trump’s rapport with the two Far East rainmakers has evidently ebbed from chummy to chilly. Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump have parried over China’s campaign to use any means possible, including theft of intellectual property estimated to be worth between $225 billion and $600 billion annually, to surpass the U.S. as the world’s top economic power. Behind his kindly countenance, though, Mr. Xi has sharpened his own resolve to resist any U.S. definition of fair trade. Accustomed to special treatment from Washington on issues of trade, Mr. Xi couldn’t have foreseen Mr. Trump’s dogged adherence to an “America first” economic policy. When the United States ended the status quo by announcing 25 percent tariffs on Chinese goods worth $50 billion in June 2018, China’s president naturally retaliated with a similar penalty on $34 billion worth of U.S. imports. Continuing failure this year to reach accommodation has resulted in additional U.S. tariffs on new Chinese products worth $200 billion and Beijing has returned the disfavor with duties on another $60 billion worth of American exports. Then Mr. Trump announced that 10 percent tariffs on a remaining $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, which he had suspended during the G-20 meeting in June, would take effect on Sept. 1 unless a deal was reached.

Only yesterday, Turkey was considered a candidate for membership in the European Union, a reliable friend of the West. Turkey was reasonably modern, forward looking, and Western oriented. Turkey was already a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and membership in the EU would only cement its alliance with the West. Alas, over the past several years Turkey has devolved from something unique to something close to just another depressing redoubt of Middle Eastern despotism. Recep Tayyip Erdogan bears much of the blame and responsibility for such a sorry state of affairs, and for Turkey’s growing estrangement from the Western world that it once looked to for guidance. Turkey only yesterday enjoyed strong relations with Israel. It was the first Muslim-majority country to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, and for decades Turkey and Israel enjoyed not only strong diplomatic ties, but economic and military relations as well. But Mr. Erdogan, as befits his Islamist outlook, has shifted Turkey’s relations with Israel to one of hostility. Attacking Israel is a convenient diversion from pressing problems at home. The Turkish lira hit a record low last week, and its value has declined by about 20 percent so far this year, impoverishing Turks. Both public and private sectors are heavily indebted, which economists blame for the failing currency. Right out of a Middle Eastern strongman’s playbook, Mr. Erdogan has grown increasingly repressive at home. About 40,000 teachers were fired after a failed coup attempt. Nearly 130,000 Turks in the public and private sectors were sacked over accusations of ties to the Gulenist movement, which Mr. Erdogan blames for the failed attempt to remove him. 30

Uncle Sam takes the losses on unpaid student loans ? and those are mounting very rapidly. If the banks that made the loans and colleges that enrolled unqualified students had to bear those losses, rest assured they would screen students much more carefully ? a lot of unqualified students would only be admitted if their parents footed the entire bill. Universities would not be so eager to push majors that impart left-wing ideological biases. They would ensure students spent more time in the classroom and learned something useful and less time at student unions with Club Med amenities or demonstrating for social justice. Independent assessments show that 40 percent of college graduates lack essential critical thinking and problem solving skills required by businesses for entry level of management and professional positions. It is no surprise that 40 percent of college graduates end up serving coffee at Starbucks or in other positions that do not require a bachelor’s degree. Many more young people should be enrolled in Department of Labor-certified apprenticeships or similar private sector programs. Privately-supported apprenticeships are not merely in blue-collar trades like welding but rather the full range of good-paying entry-level opportunities in banking, hospitality, information technology and automation systems that define the post-industrial economy. Offering free tuition to young people will actually make many college freshmen worse off. They will still borrow to cover living expenses and either won’t complete college or receive a degree that is not worth much when they could be earning a decent wage and learning a useful skill. That’s something university faculties seem too clueless.

A cross the country, millions of families are preparing to send their 18-year-olds off to college ? for many, this will be the worst thing they ever did to their children. For half the students who give college a try, it will prove a lousy investment. Democratic presidential hopefuls promising free tuition should know better than to hawk such snake oil. The whole premise behind federal student loan programs is that higher education is a good investment. For the nation, a more skilled labor force increases national productivity and for the students, graduates enjoy higher lifetime earnings. The nation sends about 70 percent of high school graduates to college but judged by their math and reading scores, too many are unqualified and only about 60 percent graduate. The other 40 percent borrow huge sums, but their productivity and earning power is not much improved. College debt often haunts them for decades, delay marriages and children, homeownership and other goals that would simply be more attainable had they never set foot on a college campus. Fully one-quarter of graduates earn no more and often less than the typical high school graduate. They simply would have been better off learning a skill through the military or enrolling in an apprenticeship program. For Uncle Sam, over half of the student loans offered to freshmen actually lowered national productivity and GDP. The money spent on tuition could have been better invested elsewhere ? better roads, support for private apprenticeship programs, R&D grants. And many highly-educated college faculties might be better deployed in managerial and professional roles elsewhere in the private sector or government service.

In Russia’s long-term war against the West that includes the infiltration of domestic political systems, blackmail and the indirect influence of elected officials through “ethnic political organizations,” one of its most prized and enduring tactics is its exploitation of ethnoreligious rivalries and fissures within the states along its borders. However, nobody should be fooled by Russia’s claim of right to intervene on behalf of “oppressed” Russian or Russian Orthodox minorities, or its enduring readiness to offer support to allegedly repressed minorities in targeted countries. Indeed, this tactic originated with Peter the Great, if not early. Thus, today in Ukraine, Moscow has not only incited Russian speakers in Crimea, but also Hungarian minorities in the Carpathians. In Georgia, it champions the Abkhazians and South Ossetians against Georgia, claiming that many of them are really Russians and suggesting a perspective that looks to their eventual incorporation into the Russian state and the destruction of Georgian territorial integrity. Thus, across its borders, Moscow habitually plays this “national question” card to break states, render them subservient to Moscow, and simultaneously furnish grounds for rebuilding the Russian empire. Moscow can play this card in many ways across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and has frequently done so in the past. As the current travails of Syria or the Yugoslav and Transcaucasian wars of the recent past should remind us, in these parts of the world ethnic issues are not forgotten, and there are too many “political entrepreneurs” willing to stoke animosities for their own and Moscow’s benefit for us to be complacent about the threat they could present to regional security.

Like America’s Wall Street bankers, they grow richer by enabling the globalization that impoverishes France’s working and middle class as represented by the Yellow Vests. By proposing another fuel tax to combat global warming, which would do diddle if China and other developing nations continue to increase emissions, President Macron unleashed more than a revolt against the high cost of driving. Yellow Vests are violently protesting the deaf greed and statist superstitions of France’s aristocrats. In the U.K., Theresa May, who opposed Brexit during the referendum, has coyly obstructed the outcome by acceding to all of the EU demands. In America, Donald Trump offered hope and change to America’s Yellow Vests ? those away from the large coastal cities who have long suffered from jobs-destroying free trade and immigration. The residual establishment among Democrats and center-right Republicans in Congress have obstructed President Trump’s legitimate mandate by stalling appointments. Democrats have abandoned support for Obama-era policies where those coincide with his agenda. They forget President Obama ratchetted up border enforcement and deportations. The West faces a mass migration from collapsing regimes in the South. It threatens the cultural cohesiveness and values that made possible liberal democracy and two centuries of progress from the Age of Invention to the post-World War II middle class prosperity. Gerard Collomb, a respectable center-left politician and Interior minister until last October, warned Mr. Macron that France risks civil war if legal and illegal immigration are not sharply curtailed.

President Xi Jinping believes China’s ascent to global dominance is inevitable, because its authoritarian government and socialist-market economy can better deliver technological progress and prosperity than decadent Western democracies. Established elites in the West may be proving him correct. The euro is overvalued for the Mediterranean region and undervalued for Germany and other northern states. Consequently, Italy and others must run large trade deficits with Germany and pile up foreign debt or accept perpetual austerity and high unemployment. Eurozone rules strictly limit national deficits. When the League and Five Star Movement won enough seats to form a coalition government that would break Italy loose from those rules, Sergio Mattarella ? president and de facto protector of the establishment ? refused permission to form a government unless the coalition effectively pledged not to implement policies that could eventually exit the country from the euro and EU. That effectively canceled the mandate of a democratically elected government. When the coalition proposed a budget deficit outside EU guidelines, Brussels struck it down and Italy was thrust into recession. In France, Emmanuel Macron won office on a fraud. His program of hope and change is little different than center-left Socialists and center-right Republicans that governed in recent decades ? incremental labor market reforms, high taxes on the working and middle classes to finance costly social programs in the face of flagging growth and allegiance to the EU’s strict rules on for economic, environmental and immigration policy. A graduate of ENA, he is the very epitome of France’s metro elites.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Martin Feldstein, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, wrote: “The day is coming, experts tell us, when artificial intelligence and robotics will massively disrupt the labor market. Autonomous vehicles will put 3.5 million truck drivers at risk of losing their jobs. Checkout machines may replace 3.4 million cashiers. That is only the beginning of the long list of jobs that will be destroyed by technological change.” In fact, labor market disruption is constant. Fifty years ago almost no one was employed in Information Technology, and few were as recently as 30 years ago. Now, broadly defined, about 7 million people are IT workers. It is hard to imagine any future innovation that could destroy almost three-quarters of all the jobs as the farming revolution did ? the result of the combination of much better seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, farm mechanization and greatly improved farm management. Internet commerce has already destroyed millions of relatively low-skill retail jobs, but even so there is full employment in the country. Where did all of these people go? They are obviously working at something. Remember Kodak, Fuji, Nikon and all of the other household names in the camera, film and photofinishing industry? Twenty years ago, who could have imagined that Apple would be the U.S.’ largest camera company and the world’s most profitable maker of telephones? Every month, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. go out and kill entire existing industries and large companies with tens of thousands of employees. Yet again, we have full employment. So where did all of the workers in the destroyed companies go? I am willing to bet that in 50 years there will still be plenty of jobs for everyone ? just different jobs than most people have now.

And Mr. Kim should understand that securing this type of normal relationship with the Unied States, with inherent security assurances, is achievable only if he abandons his nuclear weapons and facilities. If, however, Mr. Kim believes normalization of relations with the United States is possible without having to abandon all nuclear weapons and facilities, then it’s a no-brainer ? that’s what he’ll pursue. And that’s likely what his senior advisers are telling him to pursue, arguing that the United States wants a deal and will relent, as they did with Pakistan, and eventually accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. De facto acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state would be a nuclear proliferation nightmare. Other countries in the region, definitely to include South Korea and Japan, will feel the need to acquire their own nuclear “deterrent,” regardless of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence commitments. This could then incite a nuclear arms race in the region, with other countries seeking their own nuclear deterrent. Also, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and/or fissile material to rogue states or non-state terrorist organizations is another possibility that will endanger the region and beyond. A freeze (or halt) to all nuclear tests and fissile material production, and a moratorium on all missile launches, as part of a comprehensive denuclearization agreement with North Korea would be a historic accomplishment. President Trump’s two summits and his DMZ meeting with Mr. Kim made it now possible to secure a comprehensive nuclear agreement with North Korea, something that has eluded us for the past 25 years. Equally important will be making it abundantly clear that the United States will never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

It appears that North Korea is close to achieving its ultimate goal ? de facto acceptance as a nuclear weapons state, while on a path to normalize relations with the United States. The June 12, 2018, Singapore Summit of President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong-un produced a Joint Statement that committed both countries to the establishment of a new bilateral relationship, while building a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. It also committed North Korea to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Unfortunately, during the past year, despite a second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi and a June 30, 2019, historic meeting in the Demilitarized Zone, there has been no apparent movement on achieving any of the goals cited in the Singapore Joint Statement. What we’re hearing, instead, is that North Korea may be amenable to a “freeze,” something China and Russia proposed more than two years ago. That proposal was correctly discarded, since the goal was and is complete and verifiable dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and facilities. A freeze doesn’t address the ultimate goal of complete denuclearization. Yes, it could be the first phase on a path to complete and verifiable denuclearization, but if that were the case, then a freeze should be part of an overarching agreement that commits North Korea to complete denuclearization, in return for movement on the normalization of bilateral relations and a peace treaty to end the Korean War, with the ultimate lifting of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. If Kim Jong-un is serious about economic development for North Korea and improving the living conditions for the 25 million people in the North, many malnourished, then pursuing a normal relationship with the United States is the path he should follow.