Dear Donald,
I trust you will not mind my addressing you as “Donald”. In return I will let you address me as Rocket Man if that will be of any help to you.
I send this handwritten letter on a piece of paper in the pocket of one of my most trusted friends (Mr. Dennis Rodman) in whose integrity I have complete confidence. There is no other record of these words. If they ever reach the public I will of course deny them and ascribe them to your well-known paranoia. I will also, of course, know who leaked them.
I write because you have cultivated a reputation as a deal-maker. Let’s see if you are smart enough to accept one proposed by someone else when you are offered a good one.
The first requirement for success will be that we define in precise terms what we each expect togain. For my part I need a face-saver after some of my overboard threats to A-bomb Los Angeles. I made those threats from a need to show muscle to my people who are who are beginning to chafe at their starvation rations while they watch the galling economic successes of their South Korean compatriots. I needed to show them my world A-list qualifications. Whether we actually have the capacity to A-bomb Los Angeles I am not going to tell you. What I need is to get invited to pull up a chair at the international table as an equal player with the Big Five. This will insure me of a firm place in world history and at the same time safeguard my investments (and those of my family members and close friends) in your admirably solid dollars.
From where I sit I think that what you need is a win. You have been so busy accomplishing nothing of any political substance during your first nine months that your approval ratings are below fifty percent. This is so out of line with your pre-election promises and so damaging to your own image of yourself that it must be what keeps you up till all hours dreaming up those stupid tweets. You are on your way to becoming the most ridiculed president ever, and to someone who seems to have no sense of humor or humility to fall back on, this must be especially galling. (I see no need to mince words, Donald. We are beyond diplomacy, I think.) A win — getting me to mothball my nuclear weapons — would reverse all this for you at one stroke.
So here’s the deal : you greet me in the Oval Office for the photographers, shake my hand, promise me enough food to keep my people alive for the next five years, and arrange for my country to be seated at the United Nations. In return I open my nuclear facilities to UN inspection (for real; I will hold nothing back) and promise to scale down and eventually eliminate entirely the program according to a fixed, verifiable schedule.
That’s it. You win and I win. The only losers will be those people (I presume there are some) who would like to see us commit mutual planetary suicide in the name of some cause about which they have become delusional — presumably a pseudo-religious cause, since they have to believe in some other venue where their beliefs will be able to flourish after the Big Bang. You don’t appear to have any more sympathy for such people than I do. Actually, it seems to me that there is a possibility that both of us might benefit from the elimination of a number of screwballs in each of our retinues who persist in putting hopes of short-term advantage ahead of survival.
Assuming you agree to the deal, how do we then proceed?
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First, you do a ‘Nixon-to-China’.
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You turn up in Pyongyang without your full state-visit $300,000-an-hour entourage (just Air Force One if you insist on having your personal chef fry your hamburgers).
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I greet you at the airport. The cameramen record everything. We announce our agreement.
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Mr. Rodman retires in silence, financially taken care of for life, along with anyone he desires to have with him, to the private estate I have granted him. He is forbidden all future contact with the outside world except for an occasional game of HORSE with me (he has agreed to this).
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You take me back to Washington as a guest on your plane, where we request a special session of the Security Council to approve the details of the multi-nation supervision program.
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I return to Pyongyang as a conquering hero, having established North Korea as a World Player.
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I stage the largest parade ever seen. (I will help you arrange an even larger one for Pennsylvania Avenue on the Fourth of July.)
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You announce the end of the nuclear standoff from the steps of the Capitol in front of the absolutely guaranteed largest crowd of people ever assembled on the planet. (I can help you with that too.)
Do we have a deal? RSVP.
With all good wishes to your wife and those of your family who are currently in your good graces,
Rocket Man
Pyonyang, September 2017.
Vance Weaver 