Key Points:
• The success of the summit is an important first step in a long and detailed process
• The ultimate outcome of this summit will be determined in the months and years that follow Background:
• Following a year of tumultuous exchanges, President Trump and Kim Jong-Un agreed to meet on neutral ground in pursuit of a diplomatic resolution on the Korean Peninsula.
What Has Happened:
• A deal was made; Trump and Kim signed a statement with the following conditions:
- The United States and North Korea commit to new joint relations in accordance with the desire of its peoples for peace and prosperity’
- The United States and North Korea will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula o Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, North Korea commits to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
- The United States and North Korea commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified
Why it Matters:
• The concessions made by the U.S. and North Korea are significant:
- For the U.S. to announce the suspension of military exercises on the Korean Peninsula, a major compromise would have come from North Korea
• This is the first step in a long process:
- The terms of the summit are dramatic and will need to be regularly verified and enforced o The plan for verification will need to be defined by the two countries
• This is a positive step, but we arrived at the summit because tensions reached nearly unprecedented heights:
- The Trump administration has negotiated from a position of strength, and while the outcome of the summit is positive we are not out of the woods
- North Korea has proven an untrustworthy partner in the past, and the ultimate success of the summit will be determined by the administration’s next steps
“The summit is historic because it happened and didn’t, obviously, fly off the rails. A Presidential pat on the back does not connote trust; however, it can start trust building and we all should hope that that is the intended outcome. Let’s not roll the Kim regime’s egregious and undeniable human rights violations into our evaluation of the summit. This is about reducing the clear and present danger of global nuclear annihilation, not human rights. This summit was breathtakingly unique; it was a meeting of nuclear equals…kind of. However, in the game of nukes, a definition of equality is a distinction without a difference. A nuke is a nuke.”
Major General (Ret.) James A. “Spider” Marks
Original Post 06/12/2018