Flim flam

When he came into office, Trump was the one who hyped the risk from North Korea and threatened war, not anyone else. Now he is saying he believes he has converted Kim Jong-un and neutralized the nuclear threat, when in fact nothing whatsoever has changed. Kim has made no new promises.

The meeting in Singapore consisted entirely of Trump giving and Kim taking.

What did Trump give? First, a dramatic photo-op in which one of the world’s most brutal dictators was portrayed as the equal of he the President of the United States. That conveys legitimacy both domestically and internationally on Kim, helping to secure his hold on power and he continuation of the brutal North Korean regime. His father and grandfather sought that opportunity but the American presidents of their time wouldn’t concede it without something in return. Trump did it for free. The photo op does nothing for the United States, even if Trump likes the media hype.

Trump also let the North Koreans off the hook with a vague promise to “move towards” denuclearization. This is less than Pyongyang has promised in the past, not more. And Trump gave the North Koreans–again without getting anything in return–a suspension of US and South Korean “war games,” whatever that means. Vice President Pence and the Pentagon are trying hard to walk that back so that “readiness exercises” can continue. If that fails, Moscow and Beijing will be cheered, as they have both sought an end to American exercises with South Korea.

No one should feel safer. This is a president who thinks his personal rapport with Kim guarantees American national security more than the hundreds of pages of explicit detail in the Iran nuclear deal, from which he has withdrawn without any serious plan for what to do next except pressure our European allies into re-imposing sanctions. His embrace of Kim will go down badly in Europe and Canada after the disastrous Quebec meeting of the G7. Tokyo and Seoul will make nice noises about the Singapore fiasco because they don’t want to get on the bad side of Trump. But they will be concerned that he has given away the store.

The press is portraying the Singapore meeting as “historic.” It is not. It will soon enough be seen as one more occasion on which Pyongyang snookered an American president. America is not safer. It is lonelier and weaker. Flim flam achieves nothing.