Talks were mostly that
President Trump replaced insults with flattery of North Korean despot Kim Jong Un on Tuesday, trading “Rocket Man” for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” The unprecedented spectacle of the two men talking improved on the low expectations set by the president’s pointless provocation of the rogue nuclear state. But it was a long way from the diplomatic successes Trump has spent much of his tenure wrecking.
The Singapore summit was a major concession to North Korea withheld by every other president, granting the dictator of an impoverished international pariah a tete-a-tete with the leader of the world’s greatest power. Trump was right when he noted a few months ago that “no regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea” — and wrong this week when he declared it his “honor” to meet its “very talented” and “very smart” strongman. Sure, Trump seemed to be enjoying the fuss, but the meeting in and of itself was of little benefit to the United States.
Trump also declared an end to joint military exercises with South Korea, another significant giveaway to the north that appeared to surprise our allies and troops. The administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions on the regime also stand to ease.
Kim’s concessions were modest by comparison: the return of three hostages and purported destruction of two testing sites, all before the summit, and a commitment
to repatriate Korean War remains. Otherwise, Trump left Singapore with a paper-thin pledge to “work toward” denuclearization, which falls short of the administration’s “verifiable, irreversible” standard as well as promises North Korea has made and broken before.
Diplomacy beats the alternative, but the underwhelming result invites unfavorable comparison with the Iran agreement Trump disparaged and tried to destroy, which achieved verifiable denuclearization without feting or elevating a wayward regime. Similarly, the president’s recent economic and verbal assaults on allies such as Canada, a democracy that has aided and traded with the United States for more than a century, look even worse in light of his rapport with a hereditary dictator known to have his relatives murdered.
All these examples of Trump’s foreign policy, so to speak, serve mainly to make him appear powerful and important. How they serve this nation’s interest is less apparent.