Giving peace a chance

The Trump-Kim summit is a good beginning, even though there is scepticism about how it will play out in the long run

If there is one event in recent times that has taken the world by storm, it is the summit between North Korean President Kim Jong Un and his US counterpart Donald Trump at Singapore. The successful summit is likely to ease decades-long tensions in the US-North Korea relationship. The world, at large, sees the summit as an achievement in itself. Trump is likely to get the credit for being the first US President since World War II to personally meet a North Korean president while in office.

The US President has come across as a pugnacious individual with a penchant for belligerence and bluntness. His track record so far has only pushed the US towards confrontation with other countries. His recent action in walking out of the nuclear deal with Iran and the virtual declaration of a trade war with his allies — the European Union, India and China — are clearly aimed at unsettling established agreements. Many world leaders have already had a taste of his dealings with them. 

On the other hand, young Kim, the inscrutable leader of a nation that is little known to the outside world, deigned to broach the idea of a summit has equally flummoxed everyone. He, who gives out measured responses in a controlled North Korean style, has so far not indicated what pushed him into inviting Trump for a face-to-face talk. According to various accounts, Kim may have been willy-nilly forced into reconciliation by China for creating peaceful environment in the continent. If that were so, credit goes to China too.

The very fact that the summit happened immediately lowers temperatures in the Korean Peninsula and gives lasting peace a chance at some point in the future. 

In the brief joint statement after the summit, Kim reiterated his “firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula, while Trump offered security guarantees to the North. Kim had earlier promised to denuclearise the peninsula in return for security assurances, while Trump had promised that the North would be welcomed into the international community as a respectable member and be allowed to prosper economically. The two leaders have put these demands and promises into a document that could guide future diplomatic engagement. Trump also announced that he would end the regular American “war games” with South Korea, a concession to the North.

The joint statement provided few specifics on how denuclearisation can take place or how North Korea’s steps to dismantle its arsenal will be monitored. There are no deadlines mentioned. There is no reference to China, North Korea’s only ally. There has been no word on whether the two will establish formal diplomatic relations. Besides, being unpredictable and impulsive, Trump and Kim must also stare down hardline elements in their respective administrations.

But the four-point declaration disappointed experts who have dismissed it as “very vague”; it doesn’t move forward much from earlier agreements signed in 1993 and 2005. But 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.

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. China’s foreign minister declared that, “China, of course, supports it.” India welcomed the historic summit calling it a positive development. In its reaction, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) at the same time hoped that any resolution to the North Korean “peninsula issue” would address New Delhi’s concerns about Pyongyang’s proliferation linkages with India’s neighbourhood, seen as an apparent reference to Pakistan.

By contrast, the Japanese, who have 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 an expert on Korea declared: “Not a loss, but not the win the President is going to make it out to be. It’s kind of a nothing burger.”

The writer is a retired Senior Professor, International Trade