What the commentators said

North Korea could “make a monkey” out of Trump, said Jasper Becker in The Guardian. He risks legitimising one of the world’s most appalling regimes. Any deal would have to involve the removal of Kim’s nuclear weapons and of his ability to replace them; given North Korea’s long history of duplicity, it’s hard to see how that could be verified. Pyongyang would simply accept “bribes” of food and money while secretly setting up another nuclear programme, just as it did under the Agreed Framework of the Clinton era. On the contrary, said Jacob Heilbrunn in The Spectator: Trump has made the same sort of unexpected, unorthodox gambit that Ronald Reagan – also dismissed as a buffoon – employed to end the Cold War. We may be looking at a “grand bargain” in which the North gives up its nuclear arsenal and US troops withdraw from South Korea. Trump might even “show up in Oslo” next year to collect the Nobel Peace Prize.

This could be Trump’s Nixon-in-china moment, agreed Jamil Anderlini in the FT. And China is, in fact, what it’s all about. The North Koreans feel deep resentment at having to rely totally on Beijing for food and fuel – so while Kim is unlikely to relinquish all his atomic ambitions, he might yet strike a momentous deal with the US. Trump’s best strategy, said Kim Jinwoo on Capx, would be to offer Pyongyang a long time frame, with a set number of weapons being dismantled every few years. That would allow both sides to claim they’ve negotiated successfully. “History is sometimes made in sudden, unexpected bursts”: this one could see “the amateur Trump and the amateur Kim” finally ending the Korean conflict. I’m all for negotiations in principle, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. But Trump jumped on Kim’s offer without even consulting senior aides. A summit should be a “carrot at the end of the process” after seasoned diplomats have prepared the ground. Instead, Trump seems to be handing Kim what he has always wanted – a meeting with a US leader on equal terms – “right off the bat”.