Singapore Summit
- 11 June 2018
- Posted in: Management & Leadership, Energy & Environment, Planning & Development
It’s been a wild ride to Singapore, but Donald Trump are Kim Jong-un are an hour away from their Summit at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island.
January 2nd – as the Western world recovered from New Year’s festivities, teetotal President Donald J. Trump launched the Twitter app on his Android phone and thumbed a message to the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - in 280 characters or less:
‘North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is much bigger & more powerful than his, and my Button works!’
Two months prior, in Vietnam; word reached the President that his North Korean counterpart had called him old. The President whipped-out his smart phone and engaged his (not small, remember) hands in some foreign #diplomacy:
‘Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me “old,” when I would NEVER call him “short and fat”? Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend – and maybe someday that will happen!”
Maybe, today, that will happen.
The road to Singapore is paved with insults, but in an hours time Trump and Kim will meet, instigating executive level face-to-face negotiations between the two nations. Both leaders are expected to leave Singapore later today (not before Trump gives an exclusive to Fox News’ Sean Hannity) when national security officials will continue the dialogue that has developed over the past few months on a diverse range of geopolitical issues:
- Defined frameworks for complete, verifiable, irreversible, denuclearisation (CVID) of the Korean peninsula.
- Relieving international economic sanctions on North Korea to quell potential domestic unrest over a stagnating economy.
- Reducing the military threat posed to South Korea, a US ally, by the North’s invigorated pursuit of nuclear weaponry.
- The fate of Japanese citizens taken hostage by the North Korean regime.
- The role of China and Russia in the growth of economic markets in the DPRK; both nations are currently embroiled in trade stand-offs with the United States and have historically provided financial or military provision to previous North Korean administrations.
- Security assurances from the United States that, according to secretary of state Mike Pompeo, will go beyond previous pledges not to engage North Korea with nuclear or conventional weaponry - in return for a guarantee from the DPRK regime that they will commit to CVID.
Open Forum will be covering the outcome of the Singapore Summit in addition to the 15 amendments to the Brexit withdrawal bill being debated in the House of Commons over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday.
