North Korea-US Summit Doomed to Failure
This will come as no surprise, but on North Korea I remain a sceptic. Will there be a US-North Korean summit? Yes potentially. Will it result in the end of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, long-range ballistic missile program, and size able chemical and biological weapons arsenal? The answer is a clear No. Will it be the end of the Kim Jong-un regime? No! Will US troops remain in South Korea? Yes.
For all the political posturing going on in the US and the Far East it is just that. Political posturing. There is no doubt that President Donald Trump wants to see the end of North Korea and its menacing attitude to its neighbors. Just as there is equally no doubt the Kim Jong-un is set to ensures his survival and the survival of his regime. The North Korean regime knows what happens to dictators that surrender their weapons of mass destruction and capitulate to the US and its allies, or the Russians and Chinese for that matter. The north Koreans have not conducted a new nuclear weapons test, they have not test-fire a long-range missile, they seem to be dismantling their nuclear test facility, and they appear to be playing nicely with others in the sand box. The North Koreans are doing that to lower the temperature a bit, play for time and try to ease sanctions. They don’t need to conduct another missile or nuclear test. They can do it with computer modeling at this stage and help from their enablers Russia, China, and Iran.
At the end of the day, Kim Jong-un and his family can breathe every day because they have weapons of mass destruction, and particularly nuclear weapons and they are not giving them up. The North Koreans know that within a year they are likely unstoppable. The US knows this as do most governments around the globe including Russia, China, and Iran. North Korea, China, Russia and Iran, would like nothing better than to see the US leave the summit that the Trump administration has invested so much political capital in with ‘egg on its face.’ Just as much as the Trump administration would like to walk away saying, ‘well we have tried everything including diplomacy and a summit, and all to no avail, leaving only one option to deal with the North and then Iran.
