Trump-Kim summit — laugh well tonight

US President Donald Trump said, “sleep well tonight”. The moment is ripe because not only has the idea gained momentum and some reputation, the leaders on both sides are more alike than being different. Both are renowned lunatics, though one is a tad more than the other. I am sure the readers can guess him. Both have buttons directly linking to launching of their nuclear arsenals, though one has a “much bigger and more powerful” button. One is a dictator and the other one wishes to be one.

Trump criticised the efforts made by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to achieve peace with North Korea. Trump at the time tweeted, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.” Trump ended up doing exactly that.

One of the interesting parts surrounding the summit is the critique hurled at it. It is the quintessential American critique: that North Korea gained more or had this been done by Obama, Trump would have called him names. “The summit statement is big on hyperbole and short on substance — it reads like it was written by the North Korean negotiating team,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America think tank. The other critique is that Trump is kowtowing to a dictator. To that, Trump replied, “You know why, because I don’t want you to be killed with a nuclear weapon.” The American mainstream does not have a single word or a hint of a simple reality: The United States used coercion in the form of economic sanctions to bring North Korea to the table and that coercion is a violation of the UN charter or that if Trump is criticised for pampering and honouring a dictator then the same standard should apply to America’s favourite dictators as well.



As for what was achieved at the summit, we don’t know much. All of us are in the same situation as parents of two dull students who can never achieve good grades and conspire together to lie about their respective grades and back up each other’s story in case someone wishes to confirm. Only the dull students know how they have performed at the test. The parents for a long time are kept in the dark until the day the cover is blown.

While I completely disagree with the American practice of having military bases around the world, from an imperialist standpoint the deal wasn’t probably so good after all. The Pentagon has announced that it has ended the military drills with South Korea or what Trump called “war games”. South Korea along with Japan is a long-time Asian ally of the US and it is deeply unsettling for them to see a possible erosion of the American guarantee of their defence. There may be more to lose from this than to gain, which we still have to know about.

It reminds me of a funny story I picked up in childhood. There was a family where all members were absolutely stupid. Once two brothers were walking out in the fields. A housefly lands on the forehead of one of the brothers. He froze and quietly alarmed his brother of the imminent threat, who quietly pulled his gun and aimed at the housefly. The frozen brother counted a countdown of three with his fingers and hinted to shoot. Later, the surviving brother claimed in public that the enemy took one of theirs but he made sure he took one of the enemies as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 23^rd, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.