IMHO, from an Historical perspective Trump is in a very similar position to Reagan when he was dealing with Russia back in the late 80s. Reagan was testing out a mike for the press and said out loud "I've come up with a solution to the Soviet problem. The missles will be leaving their silos in 5 min". Everyone laughed b/c obviously he was joking. Years later, we found out from ex KGB folks that the Soviets had gotten wind of this and it scared them shiitless (as we found out later, only about 25% of their ICBMs were even remotely mission capable and a high failure rate was expected from that 25%) they actually thought that the US might attack them.
That gave Reagan an edge in negotiating and be basically took the Soviets to the cleaners (and all the while, people were accusing him of sleeping through his 2nd term).
Trump as a general rule gives zero farks. I wouldn't take a bet that he wouldn't launch an attack on N Korea even though the South Koreans would get butchered by N Korea's dug in artillery. It's even worse with Bolton as NSA, he'll be advising Trump to do this for sure. N Korea has to know the above and they know what will happen if that can of ass kicking gets opened. N. Korea has a lot of gear, but no real way to project gear/power over a campaign. They flip a nuke at us and they are ashes and glass in a few hours. Conventional warfare would see them reduced to rubble in about 6-9 weeks at the price of several 100K South Koreans. So Trump is in a position of strength for sure.
He believes in running a chaotic system where no one knows what he might do or say from one day to the next. IMHO, this is absolutely a bad thing. Because the day will come when Trump will need to tell an ally that we have their back and they need to believe that. Trump is untrustworthy and cannot be taken at his word (and that's a REALLY BAD PROBLEM FOR THE POTUS to have)... this has already damaged our relationships with our NATO Allies. BUT for this kind of negotiation, it's a good thing for sure.
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