President Trump and Chairman Kim have met and signed an agreement in principle, with details yet to follow. This is essentially what Trump suggested would happen, before going to Singapore.
So ... where are we? In Churchill’s memorable phrase, “Not at the beginning of the end, but at the end of the beginning.” They’ve done the easy part, the hard part is yet to come. Will it ever happen? I don’t know and today, neither does anyone else.
The hard work - hammering out the details of how to accomplish the ringing goals - has been left to SecState Mike Pompeo and his opposite number from North Korea. Doing so is sensible and appropriate.
If we can convert the at-dagger-points relationship with North Korea of today into the prickly-but-talking sort of relationship we have with China, it will be an improvement. Not all smiles and BFF, but clearly better.
If that happens, Trump will have pulled off what Nixon did with China, made a bad situation incrementally better. It’s likely that is a best-case scenario; we have to hope it doesn’t turn out as badly as Obama’s probably well-intentioned but certainly ill-conceived overtures to theocratic Iran.
