To the Editor:



Re “Trump Cancels Meeting With Kim, Citing ‘Open Hostility’ ” (nytimes.com, May 24):

As surely as the Russian downing of an ill-advised U-2 flight doomed the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit of 1960 that might have averted the arms race, the deliberately insulting remarks by Vice President Mike Pence and the national security adviser, John Bolton, doomed a Trump-Kim summit.

By touting the Libyan model (nuclear disarmament, then United States-backed regime change), they stoked fears that they should have been working to assuage. This administration has also snatched war from the jaws of peace by renouncing the nuclear deal with Iran.

It is now the urgent responsibility of Congress to bar President Trump from launching an attack on North Korea without specific congressional authorization. Nuclear disarmament will occur not through the caprice of an egocentric president, but through a renewed grass-roots global movement to halt a gratuitous nuclear arms race and to rid the Earth of nuclear weapons before we suffer an actual nuclear catastrophe.

DAVID KEPPEL, BLOOMINGTON, IND.

To the Editor:

What an incredibly childish letter President Trump has sent to Kim Jong-un of North Korea, canceling the summit meeting. Here are the standard Trumpisms of “a wonderful dialogue” and “a beautiful gesture,” offset by a reference that our massive nuclear capability is much bigger than Mr. Kim’s.