There’s no burger like a nothing burger, and Prime Minister Abe came very close to going home from his latest Mar-a-Lago pilgrimmage empty-handed, but his political pal Donald Trump saved the day with a bit of bro-bonding and fast-food diplomacy.
Japan was very much on the margins at Mar-a-Lago give US media obsession with the sordid Beltway drama of a presidency on the rocks, a war in Syria that no one understands and the unexpected elevation of North Korea’s Kim, the “Rocketman,” to a star despot that everyone (except Abe) wants to meet.
Mar-A-Lago is arguably the crown jewel of Trump’s far-flung real estate empire. He clutched onto it through two divorces, and even as president, he has not found it beneath his pride nor a conflict of interest to tout it and other real estate holdings. Indeed, the White House video prepared for the US-Japan summit was a promotional tour, showing to good effect the entrance gate, patio, ballroom and tower, and even a gaudy chandelier. As such, it was almost indistinguishable from Mar-a-Lago commercial materials which bill the property as “The Legendary Pinnacle of Palm Beach.”
The White House, sometimes known as the “people’s house” clearly cramps the style of a man accustomed to keeping a distance from the people, rhetoric aside. His gilded lifestyle finds him flitting back and forth between Trump family-owned golf courses in Florida, Virginia and New Jersey, surely a headache for an already overtaxed secret service retinue. Trump has spent 108 days of his presidency visiting golf courses, mostly his own, the latest being a session with fellow duffer Shinzo Abe this past Wednesday at his West Palm Beach course.
Mar-A-Lago may feel like home to the restless president, but it lacks the infrastructure, discipline, trained staff and bureaucratic aplomb that make summitry at the White House an exercise in scripted perfection. Indeed, while no one is saying Mar-A-Lago is haunted, it is a weird place where weird things happen.
Abe Shinzo’s first visit to Mar-A-Lago in February 2017 was marred by breaking news of NK missile launch which had security advisors on bended knee scrambling to update the president while the leaders dined on the outdoor patio within earshot of Mar-A-Lago club members lacking security clearance. One guest even snapped a photo of himself with the soldier carrying the “nuclear football” a secretive device kept in proximity of the president in case of nuclear attack.
Then last April, Trump hosted Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, looking to shore up US-China relations with a bit of real estate pomp and food and beverage swagger, something the Chinese communists do as well as anyone, and the magical evening was going well until Trump had to break it to his guest that he had chosen that very night to bombard Syria in a very non-essential show of force.
Undoubtedly the missile strike against Syria, announced between dinner and dessert, was gauche, if not a garish piece of entertainment, which perhaps explains why Trump preferred to recall the evening in foodie terms, waxing effusively about how the Chinese president was served “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you have ever seen.”
Call it the Mar-a-Lago jinx, but Abe’s second visit, meant to shore up the “Donald-Shinzo” buddy-buddy relationship almost ended before it started. First there was another one of those divisive and strategically pointless one-off missile barrages of Syria just days before, and then, the discomfiting news that the US was currently engaged with Abe Shinzo’s arch-foe North Korea at an “extremely high level” as Trump took pains to explain. It soon transpired that the US had sent CIA chief Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang over Easter weekend, a closely guarded secret until the eve of Abe’s America visit. The reason why Trump made a point of saying that the US and North Korea were communicating at an “extremely high” level was because the president was talking about himself, revealing a previously undisclosed phone call with North Korea’s controversial Kim Jong-Un.
Abe and Trump both put on a good show, bending to pretend that everything was honky-dory between them, despite tariff tiffs, appallingly low poll numbers, and the shift in the US position on North Korea. Photos released by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows the president in black trousers, the prime minister in white, squeezing into the same golf cart and later sharing a fist bump on the green. A bromance for the ages.
Abe found flattery works with Trump and he was paid back in kind. Although Abe’s third US visit to see Trump was not entirely free of the indignity that he present himself as a subordinate and a supplicant seeking the good graces of his good friend “Donald,” the diplomatically ill-adept and tone-deaf Trump was about as kind to his Japan bro as he is wont to be with anyone, promising to be “very loyal to Japan” although it is unsure what that means as he has not budged on trade issues (red meat to his red state base) and his reversal on North Korea renders anachronistic Abe’s key foreign policy plank. He did add that he was impressed at Abe’s passion for the abductee issue, but it’s hard to see how this does anything to restore balance to Japan policy when China, South Korea, and now, the US are all actively and competitively courting the pudgy, pugilistic dictator formerly known as “Rocketman.”
Abe comported himself well considering the world-class distractions that marred the visit. Making much of what little he had to work with, Abe spoke proudly of the cheeseburger he was shared with Trump. Hamburger diplomacy was very much in evidence when Abe hosted Trump in Japan, so the burger was no joke, but rather a fast-food bond between two men who find it politically expedient to portray themselves as fast friends. A cheeseburger is not much to brag about, considering the cost and effort and potential political risk of crossing the Pacific at an inopportune time, but it wasn’t a nothing-burger, and Prime Minister Abe can be grateful for that.