The historic meeting between the president of the United States and the leader of North Korea is good news for everyone in the world who wants peace. It's better to talk than to shoot, to negotiate rather than threaten. It's no coincidence that the negotiations started as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump's aggressive policies toward North Korea. Dictators perceive a compromising approach as weakness, and that puts peace farther away and brings us closer to war.
The very fact that the meeting took place is important, but it's important to remember that the goal is not an agreement. A deal is a tool with which to achieve a goal. And there is only one goal here – the total denuclearization of North Korea.
Diplomacy is the latest stage in a war that was fought in other ways. Diplomacy, like war, is a tool, an infinitely preferable one. It saves blood, suffering, and resources. But like wars, it is judged based on whether it achieves what it set out to do. A failed deal could lead to disaster.
That was what happened with the Munich Agreement that Britain signed with Nazi Germany in 1938. Then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain bragged that he had brought about "peace in our time," and we know what happened. The same for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama preferred, rightly, the diplomatic option over military or economic action against Tehran but forgot that the goal of diplomacy was to stop Iran's nuclear program. Rather than doing so, he signed an agreement that left Iran on the verge of reaching nuclear weapons capabilities while removing the sanctions that were intended to push the country into a corner and force it to stop its plans.
What went wrong in these two deals and plenty of other similar ones? The leaders who negotiated with the dictators in question on behalf of the free world got caught up in the process and were too eager to see it end in a deal, any deal. The enemies saw that and manipulated them into signing agreements at any cost, which could only mean deals that served the dictators' interests. Could the same thing have happened in the negotiations between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? Of course – therefore, there is no room for euphoria.
There are encouraging signs that leave room for optimism. One is the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. In pulling out of the 2015 deal, Trump demonstrated daring as well as diplomatic insight and leadership. There are few leaders who would have done the same. We can only hope that he will exhibit the same determination in his talks with North Korea. However, we need to remember that the Iranian deal was Obama's baby. How will Trump behave regarding his own "baby" of an agreement?
Another positive sign, maybe the most positive, is that the principles Trump put down and signed with Kim discuss denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. At this stage, it would be hard to hope for a better outcome.
But we should also remember that North Korea has already trampled similar deals signed with previous U.S. presidents. This summit is unprecedented, but deals have already been struck and ignored. The leaders of Iran teased Obama in negotiations, and previous leaders of North Korea teased previous presidents after signing deals. So the final deal must be feasible and include measures that allow oversight of its implementation.
Trump isn't handling business negotiations here. He is the leader of the free world and negotiating with a brutal tyrant, and his only purpose is to prevent that tyrant from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Trump was criticized for "legitimizing" the serious human rights abuses in North Korea by holding talks with Kim. That is a problem, but the North Korean leader with nuclear weapons is much more dangerous to his people and to the world than the same dictator without nuclear weapons. Accepting the dictator and his nuclear program, like what happened with the Iran deal, is even worse.
