After reading and watching everything I could find about the meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un in Singapore, I came away thinking that this meeting seems to have been staged purely for the resulting optics with no possibility of an actual agreement on anything substantial, either now or in the future. Kim wanted what his family’s dynasty has desired for the last 70 years, the opportunity to be viewed on the world stage as an equal of the leader of the world’s most powerful country.  Trump wanted to be viewed as doing something that no other American president would ever do, sitting down with the despotic dictator of North Korea even if he had to do so without the preconditions he had set out earlier being met.

There is the suspicions part of my mind that wants to believe that the huge letter that Kim sent to Trump read something like this.  “Hey Donald, I hope things are going well. Listen, we need to meet face to face for all of the world to see; it will be great for both of our images. Yea, we both know that there is no chance for a real agreement; you know we will never give up our nuclear weapons and the long range missiles we need to deliver then.  My generals would never allow that, especially after we have sacrificed so much to obtain them.  However, we can agree in advance that we will work towards some kind of denuclearization in very vague terms without getting into specifics as to what that really means. No one will be the wiser. Hey, it’s a no risk, all rewards deal, so let’s meet in Singapore as we originally planned.  What do you say?”

Okay, so I really haven’t a clue what Kim’s letter to Trump really said, but the entire affair still reminded me of a giant publicity stunt, except for on thing.  There were real concessions made during the meeting, but they were all unilateral and one sided.  Kim gave away absolutely nothing except some vague promises of future cooperation.  Sure he supposedly destroyed his nuclear test site, but it had already served its purpose. He said he wouldn’t test any more missiles, but he probably has no longer any need to do so.  In comparison Trump gave away the store.

First of all Trump gave the tyrannical dictator of the “Hermit Kingdom” a seat in the world’s spotlight just by agreeing to meet with him.  Then Trump also impulsively gave away one of his biggest bargaining chips by agreeing to halt our regular military exercises with the South Koreans without consulting with any of our allies in the region. He even adopted North Korean rhetoric by referring to the exercises as “war games” and “provocative”. This was also a gift to the Chinese who want to minimize our country’s footprint near their home turf for their own selfish reasons.  Lastly with his kind words, Trump was seen as legitimizing Kim who has killed members of his own family along with hundreds of others in order to maintain his grip on power while running a country with the world’s worst human rights record and starving his own people in order to pursue his nuclear and ballistic missiles ambitions.

Meanwhile the “Great Negotiator” got nothing of substance in return.  However, the summit did provide one benefit for our country.  It gave Trump the excuse he needed to step away from his childish rhetoric and name calling to which Kim had responded in kind.  (However, it does seem odd that Trump now refers to Kim as a trusted friend while at the same time treating Justin Trudeau of Canada as an enemy.)  In the atmosphere Trump and Kim had originally created, a war that would have results in the deaths of millions of people and many of our own troops was too much of a possibility.  To the extent that the possibility of war on the Korean peninsula has been decreased, that has to be viewed as a good thing.

Cajun     6/13/2018