Dumbfounding his critics, 71-year-old President Donald Trump declared today that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat, insisting the joint communiqué signed yesterday with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un expects both sides to sign a peace treaty soon. Technically at a state of war since the July 27, 1953 end to the Korean War, a peace treaty would finally end the conflict, paving the way for the U.S. to implement a kind of Marshall Plan to rebuild the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea’s [DPRK] crippled economy. Yesterday’s joint statement commits both countries to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a past precondition for direct U.S. talks. Trump pulled the requirement of immediate and verifiable nuclear disarmament, focusing instead on rapport-building, something needed to end the Korean War with a peace treaty.
Trump’s summit was met with partisan skeptics in the Democrat-friendly liberal press, unable to acknowledge the unprecedented accomplishment of a summit with Kim. Before Trump’s June 12 face-to-face summit, the press doubted the meeting would ever take place, blaming Trump for canceling the meeting. Once the meeting took place, the press now focuses on what Trump didn’t accomplishment in the first face-to-face meeting between a U.S. president and North Korean dictator. “Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump tweeted. “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong-un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future,” Trump tweeted, reassuring the public that there’s less of a nuclear threat now. Democrat skeptics jumped all over Trump’s statements.
Trump’s biggest Democratic critic in the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), refuted Trump’s statements about a lowered nuclear risk. “One trip and it’s ‘mission accomplished,’” said Schiff. “Mr President? North Korea still has all its nuclear missiles and we only go a vague promise of future denuclearization from a regime that can’t be trusted,” insisted Schiff, not buying Trump’s statement about lowered risk. But if North Korea has committed itself to peace with the U.S., nuclear-armed powers don’t consider attacking allies. “North Korea is a real and present threat. So is a dangerously naïve president,” said Schiff, not heeding Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s follow-up diplomacy with North Korean officials. Schiff bases all his statements on scoring political points ahead of November’s Midterm elections, hoping the House and Senate swings Democratic.
When you consider the avalanche of Democrat-media driven criticism over Trump’s summit, it shows that peacemaking, nuclear disarmament and diplomacy take a backseat to politics. Schiff views Trump’s summit as a direct threat to Democrats’ plans to take back the House and Senate next November. Boasting about a “blue wave” in November, recent aggregate polling predicts that Republicans will retain the House and Senate, despite losing some House seats. When you consider Trump pulling off the unlikely June 12 summit, Democrats should give him credit for working tirelessly to reduce the North Korean nuclear threat. Unlike North Korea until the summit, many countries have nuclear weapons, including Pakistan and India, but aren’t considered a nuclear threat. Only Sept. 23, 2017 did North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho say it’s “inevitable” DPRK missiles would hit the U.S.
Trump’s tough talk against Kim, promising “Fire-and-Fury” if North Korea continues to make nuclear threat against the U.S., resulted in Kim coming to the peace table. Trump was routinely slammed in the press for war mongering last year, when, if fact, his negotiating methods induced Kim to talk. No one last years could have imagined the U.S. and North Korea signing a peace treaty. Now there’s a good chance the U.S. and North Korea can finally end the Korean War. “Oh yes, most definitely, Absolutely . . . you used the term major disarmament, something like that? We’re hopeful that we can achieve that in the 2-1/2 years,” said Pompeo, responding to skeptics in the press. Press reports questioned why “verifiable” and “irreversible” was not part of the joint U.S.-North Korean communiqué. Pompeo said North Korea was committed to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Canceling future joint-military exercises with South Korea, the anti-Trump press questioned the advisability of ending war games. Trump explained that as long as North Korea faithfully executed the terms of the joint communiqué, there was no need to continue provocative joint military activities. Trump’s liberal critics want to spin the June 12 Summit that Kim badly out-negotiated the president. Yet Trump has given nothing to Kim unless he continues to work hard to disarm his nukes and ballistic missiles. With China asking Trump to end sanctions against North Korea, Trump and Pompeo made clear they’ll be no sanctions relief until Kim’s verifiable disarmament process begins. With any negotiation and joint statement, all the U.S. has now is the good faith of its peace partner. If Kim wants peace-and-prosperity for the DPRK, disarmament is the only way there.
