Singapore tango

Did it live up to its billing as the Summit of the Century or was it an over-hyped media event that travelled over territory that has already been trodden on before? In the event, the very fact that US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un met and held consecutive meetings that stretched for four hours, immediately lowers temperatures in the Korean Peninsula and gives a lasting peace a chance at some point in the future. But the four-point declaration disappoints with experts dismissing it as “very vague”; it doesn’t move forward much from earlier agreements signed in 1993 and 2005. Trump, who was clearly in an ebullient mood after pulling off his presidency’s greatest coup, talked up the agreement like the salesman that he is, and said the talks had been “honest, direct and productive” and had the potential for a new relationship. To critics who said he shouldn’t have met Kim unless he was confident about concrete results, he added, “It's not a big deal to meet.”

Certainly, Trump and his team were singing a very different tune from the one they’d been belting out in the summit run-up. A day before the talks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo firmly declared that any agreement would require a “robust verification” programme. The US administration also emphasised that denuclearisation would have to happen immediately or on a very definite timeline. Instead, the final agreement talked in the broadest possible terms about a desire “to establish a new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire .... for peace and prosperity.” Specifically, on denuclearisation, the agreement inconclusively stated, “DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.” By contrast, the US made several sweeping concessions, first among them that Kim got to pose and negotiate with Trump. Significantly, Trump has also said that South Korea and the US would stop holding war games. As justification for these big concessions, Trump pointed out that there’ve already been benefits from a gradual rapprochement and that there had been no nuclear or missile tests for the last seven months. That the North Koreans had closed down their missile engine testing sites was also counted as another positive.

For now, the region’s key players appear positive about the summit. South Korea, which brought together the two sides, immediately gave the talks the thumbs up. And China’s foreign minister declared that, “China, of course, supports it.” By contrast, the Japanese, who’ve been left on the sidelines, are worried about short-range North Korean missiles that could threaten it. But, while the summit may bring short-term peace, there’s scepticism about how it will play out in the long run. As one Korea expert declared colourfully: “Not a loss, but not the win the President is going to make it out to be. It’s kind of a nothingburger.”

COMMENT NOW