Daily Times

After months of nail-biting anticipation, US President Donald Trump finally held an historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un. Both countries have now stemmed in a phase of associations previously believed impossible.

Interestingly, Singapore spent close to $15m to cover Kim’s overseas accommodation and security. International sanctions made it difficult for the supreme leader of the hermit nation to cover his overseas accommodation.

Significantly, the agreements in the meeting contained Trump committing to provide security guarantees to North Korea and as a response, Kim reaffirmed his commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, both sides did not come to any arrangement on how to accomplish or verify that denuclearization. Also, there was no mention of Washington’s key demands, namely the Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Disarmament (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure. Establishment of new Washington-Pyongyang relations and repatriation of prisoners of wars were also amongst the things of consensus. However, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo says uplifting of sanctions on North Korea hinges on complete denuclearization of the country.

Quite amusingly, a faux movie trailer was also presented by Trump in the historic summit which, according to the White House, was to motivate Mr. Kim to break out of the country’s long isolation and rejoin the world by giving up his nuclear weapons.

Recently, a picture took rounds on the internet in which two US presidents and one White House envoy were shown shaking hands with three autocrats. Two of the autocrats were Saddam Hussain and Muammar Qaddafi who were both toppled and put to death by the US. The third was of Kim Jong Un shaking hands with Donald Trump

The movie plot, although, did not impress Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who said “It seems unlikely that a man who ruthlessly ordered the murder of his half-brother with a nerve agent is likely to be beguiled by a film trailer and decide to abandon the nuclear-armed missiles that are a centrepiece of his propaganda.”

In Pyongyang, there were vociferous claims of the triumphant meeting of their supreme leader with Mr. Trump. While in the US mainstream media, it seemed like two different meetings were taking place simultaneously in Singapore as one camp was congratulating Trump on his triumph on bringing about peace in the Korean Peninsula and other camp was chastising Trump about how he legitimised a dictator’s regime and ended war games with Seoul.

One of Trump’s fiercest rival Antony J Blinken, who was deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, applauded Trump’s efforts by saying, “We’re in a better place today than we were a year ago. It was worth trying the top-down approach to dealing with Mr. Kim, because the alternative path has failed repeatedly.”

Recently, a picture took rounds on the internet in which two US presidents and one White House envoy were shown shaking hands with three autocrats. Two of the autocrats were Saddam Hussain and Muammar Qaddafi who both were toppled and put to death by the US. The third snap was of Kim Jong Un shaking hands with Donald Trump making an analogy with the fate of both tyrants but toppling the government of North Korean leader seems to be a cloud on the horizon as the socialist leader has the backing of the mighty China and Russia.

If we talk about international market then businesses are vary even if North Korea opens its economy. Wook Yoo, partner at Bae, Kim & Lee, a South Korean law firm said, “A few big companies have tentatively reached out to contacts in North Korea.” But if progress is made even then the world will have to endure a leader who caused shortage of food and other necessities to his people by averting millions of dollars of his country’s wealth by building superfluous weapons. When it comes to business, then venturing in the North Korea is not for the faint of heart as few Chinese, Japanese and South Korean companies have already seen their assets appropriated.

The supreme irony of the Singapore meeting is the idea of restraining the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and not eradicating them, which reminiscences the Iran deal that Mr. Trump has so nonchalantly rebuffed and if he continues doing that then he will emulate the moves that his predecessor made in Iran.

Mr. Trump is eyeing on a Nobel Prize! However astounding such a sentence might be, but it is axiomatic that Donald Trump will now become a Nobel Laureate for bringing peace in Korea and, a second term as president, which is looking more probable by the day, may almost be as shocking.

Now, the current international scenario begs the question that if the US can negotiate peace with North Korea then why not with Russia? Or why not with Iran? As in the very words of Sir Winston Churchill “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war”.

The writer is an old Ravian and currently studying law and policy. He can be reached at khirad777@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, June 20^th 2018.