What to expect

first step in a long process. So much for Trump’s tough negotiating style. No matter what happens in Singapore, said Robin Wright in The New Yorker, Kim has already scored a great victory. By building nuclear weapons and ICBMs that can reach the U.S., Kim has gotten “a meeting with the world’s most powerful leader.” And by agreeing to negotiate with Trump, he’s “been transformed from the head of a hermit kingdom ostracized and sanctioned by much of the world” to a leader with enormous leverage, sought out by China’s president and the Putin regime.

Trump’s “fervent narcissism” might actually be useful in his dealings with Kim, said Bill Scher in Politico.com. He will be willing to go further than his predecessors to satisfy Kim, perhaps by agreeing to gradually withdraw American troops from South Korea in return for gradual denuclearization. If Democrats truly prefer diplomacy to war, they shouldn’t attack such a deal on partisan grounds. It’s in all Americans’ “long-term interests for North Korean diplomacy to succeed.” The alternative—“a military crisis with a nuclear-armed Kim Jong Un—is too awful to contemplate.”