Romancing Kim in Singapore won’t denuclearize North Korea or improve its human rights record.
As counterproliferation experts and seasoned North Korea watchers have concluded in parsing the joint communique to Tuesday’s summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, no significant or tangible steps were actually taken toward denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. The joint statement released after the meeting, most of which had been agreed to beforehand, committed North Korea to nothing. The two sides essentially agreed to do what they have already decided to do — continue negotiating.
North Korea, which made only vague rehashed pledges, gained significant concessions, including a halt to joint U. S.-South Korea war games. Meanwhile, China, which helped broker and leaven the summit, has relaxed its recently stepped-up enforcement of the UN sanctions, an important piece of leverage on Kim.
One leading counterproliferation expert, Jeffrey Lewis, called the agreement “a joke.” Eliot Cohen, a senior official in George W. Bush’s State Department, said Trump was essentially conning the U. S. media market for political purposes: “He’s a huckster and a fantasist. This is all the fast talk of a New York grifter. You can’t believe any of it.”
Kim, in achieving the remarkable diplomatic feat of transforming from ruthless dictator to world statesmen in just a few months, seems to have learned something from his friend, former NBA star Dennis Rodman, also on hand in Singapore for the summit circus. Indeed, North Korea is now in a position to do what Rodman memorably did exactly 20 years ago on the same night as the summit, during the crucial final minute of Game 3 of the 1998 NBA finals: grab the ball, hold on, and let the clock run out. Kim can now keep talking, keep the clock running, gain legitimacy on the world stage, and ultimately “win,” when the world finally concedes on North Korea’s status as a nuclear power.
The news is even worse for the people of North Korea, who daily suffer from the Kim regime’s totalitarian abuses. In burnishing Kim’s stature, the deal may well end up indefinitely entrenching his rule.
In a news conference Tuesday, when asked about prisoners in North Korea’s vast network of labor camps and gulags, Trump tried to suggest that they were “great winners” because of the summit, presumably on a vague and unsupported theory that denuclearization (which isn’t likely to happen anytime soon) will somehow lead to improvements in North Korea’s human rights record.
