Reaction to President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un predictably divided along political lines.
Republicans mostly gave Trump a pass on his extreme oversell in which he declared “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea,” while Democrats nitpicked whether he got enough in return for the concessions and prestige he gave Kim.
Politics, however, is the last concern here; what matters is that nuclear tensions between the two countries have significantly de-escalated, at least for now, and there is no downside to that.
We’re in a far better place than a few months ago, when the two man-child leaders were calling each other “Little Rocket Man” and “dotard,” comparing the size of their buttons and threatening “fire and fury.”
Their fear-mongering directly set the stage for the terror that gripped Hawaii after the state’s false nuclear alert in January, and any step back from that is welcome.
The Trump-Kim agreement lacked specific commitments, but that doesn’t mean it lacked value.
They basically exchanged a moratorium on U.S.-South Korea war games for a moratorium on North Korean nuclear bomb and missile tests, a reasonable first step toward lowering the temperature. China has advocated this all along.
The previous saber-rattling, in which Kim tested bigger nuclear bombs and longer-range missiles while we responded with B-1 bomber exercises and warships, was fraught with risks of deadly miscalculation by erratic leaders.
The long-standing U.S. demand for North Korean disarmament before talks on lifting sanctions began amounted to a surrender that Kim would never accept.
A moratorium is a long way from denuclearization, but it’s worth something to get a freeze on nuclear testing before North Korea has demonstrated an ability to marry an atomic bomb with a ballistic missile and accurately hit a faraway target.
Concerns that the summit gave Kim too much stature on the world stage are secondary; any credibility he gained will be gone in an instant if he reverts to cartoonish rhetoric and childish threats.
Trump deserved criticism for his insensitivity to Kim’s brutal repression of his people and his lavish praise of the dictator as “very honorable,” “very worthy,” “very talented” and loved by his people. His superlatives were way over-the-top and unnecessary.
But Kim’s tyranny is another issue for another day unless we’re willing to go to nuclear war with North Korea over human rights violations; until the nuclear standoff is defused, there can be no meaningful negotiations on other issues dividing us.
We’re dealing with two capricious leaders with long records of reneging on commitments, so who knows how long the new comity between our countries will last or where it will lead.
But this unexpected turn from doomsday rhetoric can only be viewed as welcome relief.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
