> Editorial: Good start at nuke summit
The mood between the two men spoke well for a peaceful future.
It’s a long road from a handshake to peace with nuclear disarmament. That said, the first meeting ever between a sitting US president and the leader of North Korea yesterday seemed the best first step possible on that road. Neither Donald Trump nor Kim Jong-un has been kidding during the month-long lead-up to their summit. This meeting alone makes war in the region unlikely. The mood between the two men and their advisers spoke well for a peaceful future.
The mood was upbeat elsewhere. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he was so excited he could hardly sleep before the summit. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s office said he was delighted by the successful start of the summit. The first official response from Asean was a wish for success from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamad.
Mr Trump said several times yesterday that he believes the meetings are the start of a “terrific, successful relationship”. Mr Kim, who came up with the idea of the summit, was arguably more thoughtful. He spoke frankly of “wrong behaviours” of the past, neither taking or laying blame. “We have overcome these,” he said, matching Mr Trump’s optimism in every way.
This is not (yet) a Korean War peace treaty or a signed pact for nuclear disarmament by Pyongyang. But as Mr Kim stated, everything has changed. It is a good beginning — nothing went wrong, and many things seem to be going right.
There was plenty of talk and articles yesterday about the “historic summit” and that is not wrong. Pyongyang and Washington have been enemies through cold and hot wars since Korea was split at the end of World War II. But what brought yesterday’s meeting to fruition was the unlikely and, to many, unlikeable pair who shook hands at exactly 9am Singapore time.
Mr Kim is 35, Mr Trump 71. Both were brought up amid riches and privilege. But while the differences between the two men are virtually legion, they also are alike. They are political risk-takers and nervy attention seekers. They are unafraid to offend; some say they enjoy being offensive. Their threats, bluster and name calling made headlines. Mr Trump called him “Little Rocket Man”, and not just in tweets but at the United Nations. Mr Kim called him a “dotard” — an archaic term for a mentally failing old person.
And now, having signed a document promising to cooperate, they call each other partners. It doesn’t get much better for East and Southeast Asia than the world’s two most dangerous men seated at the negotiating table and actually negotiating. Mr Kim holds East Asia’s most dangerous weapons cache, containing nuclear bombs and the ballistic missiles to carry them. The challenge is how to take them away from North Korea and create a “denuclearised” Korean peninsula, the goal of all countries with a stake in the region. That is, how to convince Mr Kim to surrender or destroy them, voluntarily.
Much was made in America of the Kim-Trump decision to begin their new relationship with a one-on-one meeting. Mr Trump’s critics, of whom there is no shortage, said such meetings are dangerous and should not be held. Apart from translators, there are no witnesses to who said what. No one knows today just how Pyongyang-Washington relations will develop under these two brash political brats. But it must be said that the formal and accepted ways of international relations have failed spectacularly.
It is clearly a new day in relations concerning North Korea. Neither Mr Kim nor Mr Trump deserves current criticism because they didn’t follow old and ineffective methods. Without their fresh approaches, there would have been no summit.