The recent summit held in Singapore brought to light a new friendship between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. The agreement reached is brief, and rests on a few loosely detailed points. The first is that the US and DPRK work together for “peace and prosperity” as well as a “stable peace” on the Korean peninsula. The second, to work toward “complete denuclearization” of the peninsula, and the third is a commitment to “recovering POW/MIA remains including the immediate reparations of those already identified.”
The implications are somewhat vague, but assuming Kim Jong Un upholds his agreement to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons, at least something is won here. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons in any increment is a worthy cause, as is working toward “peace and prosperity”, usually.
Unfortunately, the document signed at the summit is really nothing more than an informal commitment. It must pass through congress and could take years to be actualized. The agreement also seems to lack some pretty important details, such as a clear plan for achieving denuclearization, or a way to verify compliance.
Some refer to the summit as a “photo op”, while still others, like former NBA player Dennis Rodman, praise the agreement and praise Trump for making it happen. Rodman claims to have introduced the two and supported their friendship. When asked of his support for Kim Jong Un, he said he didn’t want to focus on the politics, and just wanted everyone to get along. Rodman claims Trump’s secretary called to congratulate him and pass on Trump’s gratitude for his help, but let us not forget this tweet from Trump in 2014, “Crazy Dennis Rodman is saying I wanted to go to North Korea with him. Never discussed, no interest, last place on Earth I want to go to”.
Rodman’s involvement is not out of character for him, but highlights what could be a pretty misinformed way of dealing with foreign policy, the influence of pop-culture celebrities, like Trump himself. In fact, Trump and Rodman met on Trump’s reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice.
Something else that was left out of the summit and the agreement is the simple fact that Kim Jong Un is a dictator, and has been publicly criticized for the mistreatment of his people by Trump himself. When asked about this in interviews after the summit, Trump said “I’m given what I’m given” and defended him, saying that he “met him”, befriended him and thought that he “really wanted to do a great job”.
Almost anyone can agree that nuclear weapons are bad news and having less of them would be, objectively, a good thing. That’s not a difficult conclusion to come to, and certainly an easy idea to vaguely commit to. The summit is an important historical landmark, but it’s implications and results are left up to fate, that, and two men with nuclear buttons.
