North Korean leader Kim Jong-un disembarks from his aircraft, a modified IL-62M from the Soviet era, during his recent trip to Dalian for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Kim is expected to use the same aircraft on his trip to Singapore for the June 12 summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. / Yonhap
The time is set, the place decided and the agenda fine-tuned.
All appears ready to go for the June 12 North Korea-U.S. summit at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island, Singapore, in a potential first round of what’s supposed to be a bilateral effort to denuclearize the North and ease its way out of isolation.
But each of the North, the U.S. and South Korea, the three key stakeholders in this grand game, ends up seeking something that is not in its element, resembles wishful thinking and so is lacking in its sincerity.
Trump
The U.S. is not a saint and has made many deals with devil in its foreign policy detail. But it has more or less represented the better side of global affairs.
Under businessman President Donald Trump, it is trying to cut a deal with the worst combination of terrorist, despot and existential threat to the world’s peace.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered his elder half-brother poisoned by his agents in Malaysia. The dictator, 34, had his uncle, a potential pretender, killed by anti-aircraft guns. And he has purged his subordinates for just dozing off during meetings.
Kim has inherited much of North Korea as one big gulag. Given the life spans of his father and grandfather, Kim Jong-un’s rule will prove no less brutal than theirs.
Until quite recently, Kim held the region and the rest of the world hostage with his growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles, and threats of nuclear war.
The U.S. is promising its adversary a lot ― security of its dynastic regime and prosperity ― like enabling North Koreans to eat meat ― under Kim’s continued rule.
The deal Washington is offering denies what the North stands for. The country has provided many foreign policy challenges for previous U.S. presidents and Trump has made a big deal of that.
Besides the usual list of Trump’s domestic problems, one cannot but wonder if the U.S. really means what it is telling the North or it is thinking of other possibilities.
