It’s infinitely better that North Korea and the United States exchange words rather than missiles.

Yet President Trump’s decision to meet Kim Jong-un strikes me as a dangerous gamble and a bad idea. I’m afraid that North Korea may be playing Trump, and that in turn Trump may be playing us.

I fear that Trump is being played because at the outset, apparently in exchange for nothing clear-cut, he has agreed to give North Korea what it has long craved: the respect and legitimacy that comes from the North Korean leader standing as an equal beside the American president. And I worry that we in the media and the public are being played because this is a way for Trump to change the subject from a Russia investigation and a porn actress to himself as Great Peacemaker.

To be clear, I’m all for negotiations. Ever since I began covering North Korea in the 1980s, I’ve favored direct talks between the United States and North Korea, and I’ve called on Trump to send emissaries to meet Kim Jong-un.

But direct talks should be conducted by seasoned diplomats, offering an eventual summit meeting only as a carrot at the end of the process — and only if the summit serves some purpose higher than changing the headlines in the U.S. and legitimizing Kim’s regime abroad. A face-to-face should advance the interests of two countries, not just two leaders.