A summit that is worth celebrating
From reporting by the likes of the BBC, one would imagine the summit in Singapore was either a disaster or a well-spun flop. In reality, it was a moment of historic importance. North Korea and the United States have been at loggerheads since the Fifties and the situation in East Asia has been dangerously unstable for years. In January, Hawaii was warned that ballistic missiles were inbound, presumably from North Korea: the alert was false but the panic was real. Less than six months later, Donald Trump met Kim Jong-un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island and hailed a new era of peace and cooperation. The turnaround is incredible.
Of course, Mr Trump’s diplomatic style is sometimes questionable: was it really appropriate to declare that Kim, a dictator, was a talented man who “loves his country very much”? But it is precisely this spontaneity that made the summit possible. When Kim invited Mr Trump to a meeting in March, Mr Trump broke with precedent for a sitting president and said “yes”. He put his reputation on the line by agreeing to talk to a communist loathed by the American conservative establishment.
What he won from Kim is, admittedly, vague – a pledge to denuclearise North Korea in exchange for American guarantees of its security. How will decommissioning be verified? And will human rights be properly discussed at a later date? Nevertheless, a meeting like this rarely changes the world in an instant: it starts a process. That’s what happened in 1986, when Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik and startled the world by putting nuclear disarmament on the table. It’s so often the case in history that conservatives turn out to be the most effective peacemakers. Richard Nixon went to China; Dwight Eisenhower brought an end to the Korean War.
The media and foreign policy establishment is reluctant to acknowledge this, and their reactions are framed by shameless partisanship. The truth is that if Barack Obama had flown to Singapore and shaken Kim’s hand, he would have returned home to glowing headlines, celebrity endorsements and a tickertape parade. Instead, Mr Trump’s hyperbole is scrutinised inside out by professional cynics in an effort to find a crack in his achievement. Many American voters, however, have learnt to judge the president not on what he says but on what he does. Bringing Kim in from the cold – as a first step, hopefully, towards a substantial change – is an accomplishment worth celebrating.