More optics, less substance: The Trump-Kim meeting lacked specifics

As soon as he landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday, United States President Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea”. The tweet was “liked” 35,000 times within a couple of hours. This is understandable as the president’s word is enough for his diehard supporters. On its part, North Korean state media depicted Tuesday’s summit as a diplomatic victory for its leader. Whatever be the claims, there is no doubt that handshakes and smiles between the US president and the maverick dictator from a nuclear North Korea are any day preferable than the everyday spectacle of the two leaders calling each other names and threatening to push the nuclear button. To that extent, the unprecedented meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader broke new symbolic ground, and both Mr Trump and Kim Jong-un deserve credit.

However, there are several reasons why the deal is being seen by many as a disappointing case of deja vu because the document signed by the two leaders was little more than a page long and lacked almost any specifics. North Korea’s promises to denuclearise came with no detail, and did not even go as far as previous commitments it has made and broken. One promising moment came in 1994; another in 2005. But those hopes gradually fizzled out. US officials had said before the meeting they would insist that North Korea agreed to the “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement” of its nuclear weapons arsenal. The phrase appears nowhere in the statement.

It has also become clear that in his attempt to be the hero of the moment, Mr Trump rattled off a lot of promises without really getting anything concrete in return. In doing so, he ended up serving a rude surprise to his allies yet again. Take, for instance, his assurance to suspend “war games” — referring to the joint military exercises with South Korea — as they were “very provocative” as well as “very expensive”. Not surprisingly, this stunned the South Koreans because the US has in the past refused to allow this element to be up for negotiation. Mr Trump also announced the US would provide North Korea with “security guarantees” in an effort to allay apprehensions of US aggression. However, there is no clarity on what these “guarantees” will entail. In other words, how does this affect or contravene the US commitment to its long-standing allies in the region — South Korea and Japan — that it will defend them militarily? What happens, for instance, to the over 28,000 American troops stationed in South Korea?

The generosity of the US was in stark contrast to the ambiguity about what North Korea was supposed to do as a result of this agreement. It appears, in his showmanship, the US President has left the details to be filled in later. It should have been the other way round. The end result of this episode is that while there is much publicity for both leaders, there is little credibility that things will be resolved. The handshake was historic, no doubt, but the optics may be hiding a significant gap in the substance.