In a commentary today in 38North, Leon Sigal hit the nail on the head.
Before we get to it, some background.
A week after President Trump met Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the US foreign policy establishment has settled on a simple story line: the summit was no big deal; North Korea got everything it wanted, while Trump gave away the store; by stopping US-South Korea military exercises, our “allies” have been abandoned; the agreement they signed is weaker than denuclearization pacts negotiated before; and so on.
This Washington Consensus, as I’ve been calling it, was perfectly illustrated by an exchange I had yesterday on Twitter with Peter W. Singer, an analyst and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, whose work on the privatization of the US military I have lauded. It began with me snapping at a comment he made, in reference to the cancellation of exercises scheduled for August, offering “Congrats to North Korea on getting what you wanted, all for the sake of an empty photo op.” I tweeted back:
https://twitter.com/peterwsinger/status/1009457081643159552
He then went on to say this: “The terms of the ‘agreement’ are less than any other past agreement we’ve made with NK. There is no “there” there. NK got what it wanted, both in the meeting itself (a 3 generation goal for them) and in the wargame suspension, in exchange for no real new moves.” (You can read the full exchange here).
A similar view was voiced today by someone who has generally been highly critical of US foreign policy and is no friend of the establishment: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff at the State Department to Colin Powell.
In an interview on The Real News with reporter Aaron Mate, Wilkerson dismissed the entire Singapore summit as an empty, meaningless gesture. “What happened in Singapore was show,” he said. “It was pure, reality TV show; it’s what Donald Trump excels in.” He went on to say that “North Korea has given up absolutely nothing,” and criticized the Trump administration for shattering the 60+ years of US “containment” policies, which he claimed kept the peace in Korea.
Here’s what I told Aaron after he emailed me the interview asking for comment (I’ve appeared on The Real News several times over the past few months):
What I find most puzzling is Wilkerson’s claim that the containment policies of the past 70 years have kept the peace (not so for most Koreans) and his dismissal of the inter-Korean dialogue that’s already produced so much, including military to military talks, creation of a liaison center in Gaesong, a suspension of South Korea’s own exercises, and more. Wilkerson simply mistrusts the Trump administration’s ability to carry this through – for good reasons, perhaps, but without understanding (in my view) the deep role being played by Moon Jae In and South Korea in the peace process.
Come now Leon Sigal, a former editorial writer for The New York Times who has been focusing on North Korea for years and I’ve quoted extensively in my reporting – including my latest piece for The Nation from Singapore.
In a piece posted today at 38 North, “Breaking the News Frame Of Trump’s Nuclear Diplomacy,” Sigal challenged the Washington Consensus that’s been shaped by the “framing” of the story by mainstream publications like the Washington Post. Here’s a key passage from his article (italics are mine):
For all the talk of journalistic competition and investigative journalism, once a story is framed, the news media find it difficult to break that frame. And the frame for nuclear diplomacy with North Korea—to put it simply—is that a naïve, uninformed and self-aggrandizing President Trump, too eager to declare success, was taken to the cleaners by a clever, but deceitful North Korea, kowtowed to a dictator, and even had the effrontery to exchange salutes with the KPA defense minister.
These ledes all miss something obvious and essential: the President of the United States spoke respectfully with the leader of an enemy state and signed a joint statement with him, then announced he was suspending joint military exercises with South Korea. To Pyongyang, which had long conditioned denuclearization on the end of what it called US “hostile policy,” these were disarming gestures.
(While he quotes from the Post, Sigal could have been talking about this simplistic nonsense from Vox today).
Sigal goes on to quote from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent interviews and argues that the declaration in Singapore was just the beginning of a series of negotiations that will eventually lead to a final agreement, and that the US and the DPRK have reached “understandings” that have yet to be made public (something he also told me when I contacted him from Singapore). “In short, stay tuned,” he wrote, concluding with this:
As long as reporters focus on President Trump’s hyperbole and his critics’ doubts, they will assure that the news will generate more heat than light and leave observers in the dark.
I couldn’t agree more. The media should go beyond it’s simplistic reporting on the summit and try to understand the details of what both North Korea and Pompeo – the lead figure for the Trump administration – are actually saying. And let’s see what unfolds – it’s far too early to dismiss this exercise as empty posturing. After all, it’s a life and death issue for the people of Korea, North and South, where the peace train chugs on despite what the Washington establishment is saying.
