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AFA Weekly: The risky summit
Next Tuesday at 9.00 am in Singapore, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will meet at the Capella hotel, the first such encounter between a US president and a North Korean leader. The aim is to negotiate a far-reaching deal to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program, but the two sides have already struggled to resolve who should pay for North Korea’s accommodation.
This minor spat is a reminder of the risk that the summit poses: it pushes a decades-old crisis closer to an outcome, without the diplomatic groundwork that would help to assure its success.
Trump thinks he can achieve a deal with North Korea. But this summit also makes the alternative more likely: a catastrophic war and unthinkable turmoil across South Korea, Japan and China, with devastating consequences across the region, including for Australia …
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Jonathan Pearlman, AFA Weekly