Donald Trump may have told everyone to “sleep well” because that whole problem with nuclear weapons in North Korea was solved. But the truth is that Trump walked away with an agreement that was appreciably weaker than one made a decade earlier, with only a vague agreement on eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula that came without a deadline for starting, guidelines for inspection, or the first idea of where to start. Now Reuters is reporting that weeks after Trump walked away with no proof of progress, the United States is finally trying to convince North Korea to put some substance behind Trump’s words.
U.S. negotiators intend to present North Korea with a timeline that contains targets for achieving “specific tasks,” though it’s not yet clear what these tasks would be. In the meantime, the United States has already surrendered joint military exercises with South Korea. Which makes it appear that Donald Trump didn’t just blink, but immediately surrender one of the biggest items on North Korea’s wish list, in exchange for … nothing at all from North Korea.
Since the meeting with Trump, Kim has held a second meeting with Chinese autocrat Xi Jiping. As the New York Times reports, the meeting between the chairs of their respective communist parties ended with a series of joint statements and agreements from China to help North Korea change from “a developing nation into a global superpower.” There seems to be no doubt that North Korea’s world status was greatly boosted by Trump’s meeting with Kim, which included tableaus of American and North Korean flags intermixed and numerous warm statements about Kim that overlooked his vile record on human rights—and his long list of political assassinations.
The rhetoric from the China visit would seem to make it clear that Trump’s visit with Kim, his praise of the North Korean dictator, and his exaggerated statements about their brief and empty mutual photo-op have made it nearly impossible to continue tight sanctions against North Korea. In meeting with Trump, Kim has achieved his two biggest goals: Disrupting the South Korean and U.S. military ties, and breaking free from sanctions.
Meanwhile, the U.S. negotiators are saying “Now the hard work begins” of trying to create an agreement that meets the terms Donald Trump already claims to have achieved. The U.S. is also admitting that North Korea has not yet made any substantial moves following the Trump–Kim meeting. And it’s not entirely clear why North Korea would make any significant change.
But in addition to Kim, there is someone who has benefited from Trump’s Singapore Summit.
With the ink barely dry on the historic Trump-Kim summit agreement, Moscow is already maneuvering itself to take advantage of rapprochement on the Korean peninsula.
As Forbes reports, Vladimir Putin is already moving to revive a project to extend the Trans-Siberian railroad the length of the Korean peninsula, not just providing an overland freight route between Seoul and Moscow, but opening up much more opportunity for trade by North Korea. It’s a plan that is backed by South Korea, because it would give them a route into the Russian and European markets at a time when trade with the U.S. is becoming more unpredictable.
The railroad would also be a precursor to a proposed Russian pipeline that would make South Korea another client of Putin’s hemisphere-spanning natural gas empire. With instability in the Middle East helping to keep prices high, Putin’s pipelines are proving to be a source of fresh revenues that are reviving a Russian economy that was moribund before 2017.
The increasing interest from both China and Russia indicate just how difficult it will be to bring North Korea back to the table with the kind of leverage needed to extract serious concessions. The issue in having a hurried and fruitless meeting such as that held by Trump and Kim wasn’t just that a bad meeting might lead to war. It’s that a weak, poorly-prepared meeting can mean that America doesn’t get a second chance to get it right.
American negotiators are now talking about seeing if North Korea “is serious” about denuclearization. But they’re not talking about how limited U.S. options are if they determine that North Korea is not about to change.