Trump-Kim meeting
Sunday night which asserted that “as Kim and Trump grab headlines and enjoy the limelight, one thing that deserves special attention is China’s role in promoting the USNorth Korea summit.”
The economic sanctions, the commentary pointed out, “played an essential role in forcing Pyongyang to recalculate the cost-andbenefit equation” and “China’s faithful implementation helped make the Security Council’s resolutions effective.”
China is claiming credit for the breakthrough in US-North Korea relations. After all, it had sent envoys to Pyongyang to explain its stance and to persuade the North to negotiate. “Even though China’s efforts did not produce immediate results,” Global Times said, “the consistency of those efforts helped convince North Korea it had no future with nuclear weaponry and the only way out of its dilemma was to abandon nuclear weapons.”
As for the Trump- Kim talks, China expects “an uphill battle in the run-up to the meeting” but, the commentary promises, China “will play a large role in the process.”
That is an important commitment whose details are unclear. North Korea has said that for it to give up nuclear weapons, the safety of its regime must be guaranteed and the military threat against it must be removed. “We believe that neither of the preconditions active involvement and support,” the commentary said.
This is something to which the Trump administration must give deep thought. What actions would it need to take to remove the military threat against Pyongyang and to reassure the regime of its safety? Will it need to withdraw American forces from South Korea?
Trump cannot enter into talks with Kim without deciding ahead of time what his own bottom line is. The future of the US-South Korea alliance may well be in the balance.
The US should consult China on what it has in mind and the role it is prepared to play. Perhaps China wants it and the US to be joint guarantors of peace and security on the Korean Peninsula. That idea may well be appealing to Trump, though the same cannot be said of his Asian allies, South Korea and Japan.