Can Trump Revive the ‘Spirit of Singapore’?
Might the North actually move toward denuclearization, as the South Koreans say Kim has suggested? Or is the U.S. being played?
After his last trip to Pyongyang in July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo knew that Washington’s efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program were flailing. Kim Jong Un had snubbed Pompeo on the trip, visiting a potato farm outside the capital and leaving him to meet with deputies powerless to make any decisions. Just over a month later, Trump canceled Pompeo’s next scheduled visit. “I feel we are not making sufficient progress,” he said. It had taken just two months for the glow of the president’s historic Singapore summit with Kim to fade, and Trump’s legion of critics in the foreign policy establishment were gleeful: “Stunt diplomacy” had failed.
