A Korean romance Has Trump been duped?
A landmark summit between President Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, ended this week with an agreement to work for the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula. In a joint statement, the US also promised to provide Pyongyang with “security guarantees”, and in a later press conference, Trump made the surprise announcement that US forces would no longer conduct joint military exercises with South Korea, which were a long-standing cause of friction. But the statement, signed in front of the world’s press, had no details of any “denuclearisation programme”. It said only that Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, would meet North Korean officials to discuss implementing the “outcomes of the summit”.
The meeting was the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. Trump described his counterpart as a “very talented man” who “loves his people very much”. He and Kim had formed “a very special bond”, he said.
What the editorials said
Trump certainly has a talent for flattering “authoritarian thugs who crave respect and legitimacy”, said The New York Times. But it’s not at all clear what he has got out of this “comprehensive” agreement, as he calls it. The joint statement – barely a page in length – is “strikingly spare”. We don’t know what is meant by “security guarantees” or what the North Koreans mean by committing themselves to “denuclearisation”. Until we do, the plaudits must wait. Whatever happens next, North Korea is already the winner, said The Guardian. The very fact of Trump agreeing to a meeting has lifted Kim’s international status. Since the summit was announced, he has seen President Xi of China twice and may soon meet President Putin. His “diplomatic work has been done for him” by Trump. Trump’s diplomatic style may be “questionable”, and what he won from Kim is admittedly “vague”, said The Daily Telegraph. But let us be clear: this was a meeting of “historic importance”. It won’t change the world in an instant: such meetings never do. But it starts a process. “Bringing Kim in from the cold is an accomplishment worth celebrating.”
What the commentators said
“What a difference a year makes,” said Nicky Woolf in the New Statesman. Not so long ago, “Armageddon seemed imminent” as Trump and Kim traded insults and threats of war. Yet after a working lunch behind closed doors, the two “former nemeses” were this week shaking hands and “smiling like old friends”. And it looks as if Trump’s “crazy guy” strategy has worked: through a show of dangerously unpredictable behaviour, he has forced his enemy into making concessions. Denuclearisation, at least according to Trump, will now begin “very quickly”. The usual “Trump-haters” are already complaining about the US doing business with a regime that cares so little for human rights, said Freddy Gray in The Spectator. And there’s no denying that Kim is a ruthless “tyrant”: there are 200,000 political prisoners in the Hermit Kingdom. But credit where it’s due. Barack Obama failed to make any progress on North Korea; Trump seems to be doing so. Even if his overtures come to nothing, he has “changed the realpolitik of the Korean peninsula” by bringing a communist enemy to the conference table.
Kim must be rubbing his eyes, said Jamil Anderlini in the FT. Trump’s concessions go far beyond anything Pyongyang can have expected. He not only offered to end military exercises with South Korea (apparently without consulting Seoul), he also indicated that he wants to see all US troops withdrawn from the South. And all Kim has given in return, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, is a promise “to work towards” denuclearisation. No deadline, no timetable, no concrete plan. This is a world away from CVID – complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament – which has long been the bottom line of US policy on North Korea. The truth is Trump has less to show for his supposedly historic deal than the US negotiators who hammered out an Agreed Framework in 1994, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. They managed to freeze the country’s plutonium programme “with a rigorous monitoring system”. Trump has just got smiles and vague promises. He has been “hoodwinked”.
What next?
Trump is still insisting that US sanctions on North Korea not be lifted until real progress is made towards denuclearisation. But the effectiveness of sanctions depends on the cooperation of the Chinese, and Beijing is now suggesting that sanctions should be eased in recognition of North Korea’s peace overtures.
A further obstacle to a full rapprochement with the US could be North Korea’s support for Syria’s Assad regime, which it has regularly supplied with arms. North Korea announced last week that Assad is soon to pay an official visit to Pyongyang.