Trump Insults Allies; Then Gets Played By Kim...Again

• For the second time in less than a year Mr. Kim, regarded by most of the world as a third-world despot and pariah, was able to achieve a huge amount of respect by convincing the American President once again to fly halfway around the world for a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Kim

• Mr. Kim will be able to continue his nuclear weapons development program and to do so without penalty, as the summit ended abruptly with no agreement to end that program and with no meaningful sanctions being imposed on North Korea

• Mr. Kim's claim that he knew nothing about the horrendous treatment, and subsequent death, of American student Otto Warmbier at the hands of his North Korean captors, was publicly accepted by Mr. Trump.

Is this really the type of judgement we want in a President?

June 2018 - Vladimir Putin better watch out. Looks like Donald Trump has a new favorite strongman to admire. And this one seems to be playing Mr. Trump just as easily as Mr. Putin has been.

Coming off a (deliberately?) rocky G7 economic summit with our Western democratic allies (more to come on this in a future article), Mr. Trump traveled to Singapore for his much ballyhooed meeting with North Korea's Communist leader, Kim Jong-Un. What a transformation: in a matter of just a few months, Mr. Kim has gone from a blood-thirsty tyrant and world pariah, to a mature peace-maker. At least in the mind of Donald Trump.

(Kim image from abcnews.com)

Mr. Trump, who still trusts Mr. Putin (at least publicly) when the latter claims to have had no knowledge of election tampering in the United States or any other western democracy (despite universal opinion to the contrary), now apparently believes that Mr. Kim is willing to eliminate all of North Korea's nuclear weapons and to allow outside inspectors to confirm that fact.

We can only hope that is the case, but the track record for Mr. Kim would belie Mr. Trump's optimism. As does the actual verbiage in the Singapore Declaration that was signed by the two men. The Trump team likes to throw around the words "denuclearization" and "verifiable" when describing Mr. Kim's commitments. In fact, though, what the North Koreans have committed to in the agreement is a step-by-step process, the steps of which are to be pursued in this order:

1) A normalization of relations between the United States and North Korea,

2) then the establishment of a "lasting and stable peace regime," and

3) only then does North Korea commit to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

(image from businessinsider.com)

Let's assume that, at some point, Mr. Kim does agree the first two vaguely-worded steps in the process have been completed and he is willing to address step number three. Verbiage related to the third step states that North Korea only will work toward complete denuclearization. Not only is denuclearization not defined, it isn't even a full commitment. It is a non-specific goal to work toward.

Does Mr. Trump realize this is a loophole big enough to fire one of North Korea's missiles through? Or was he so anxious to sign an agreement, just for the sake of saying he signed something, that he didn't really care what the details were, thinking he would try to mislead the American people about it anyway?

Note that the Declaration also refers to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, not just of North Korea. This means that the US nuclear umbrella, which includes South Korea, would have to be pulled back. If you were Mr. Kim, how would you ever agree that that actually has happened? You can bet he isn't going to eliminate his own nuclear capabilities based on a commitment the U.S. can renege on overnight.

Finally, unlike the 2005 agreement with George W. Bush, the 2018 Declaration does not commit to "verifiable" denuclearization. Mr. Kim can say that he has stopped his nuclear program and that he has blown up entrances to his underground testing sites, but would you believe him without third-party inspectors confirming those facts?

Unfortunately, it appears that Mr. Trump's first foray into personal diplomacy has been more of a publicity stunt that he can distort for domestic political purposes, one that just kicks the North Korean can down the road for the next administration to deal with.