War. Most significantly, and most disappointingly, as it turned out, North Korea pledged to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a sparse statement that pointed to the weakness of the U.S. position and showcased Trump’s lack of understanding and the administration’s inability to obtain a more detailed set of steps that North Korea should take to demonstrate Pyongyang’s sincerity about denuclearization. The communiqué fell far short of previous ones, such as the 2005 Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks that included Pyongyang’s commitment to “abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards.”
Beneath the frothy statements, smiles, and handshakes, the summit produced little of substance, with no accountability for Kim Jong Un to cease and dismantle his nuclear weapons program. Trump crafted a narrative of success, saying in Singapore, “We had a really fantastic meeting, a lot of progress….Better than anybody could have expected.” He brushed away questions about the abductions issue that was a priority for Japan, as well as North Korea’s human rights violations, which he had emphasized just a few months earlier. Trump also cast doubt on U.S. commitments to its alliances with South Korea and Japan, criticized U.S.–South Korean military exercises, and questioned the future of a U.S. troop presence in South Korea and Japan, breaking with U.S. policy and blindsiding the Pentagon and South Korean officials who then had to scramble to do damage control.
Instead, he made gratuitous comments complimenting Kim—“He is very talented. Anybody that takes over a situation like he did, at 26 years of age, and is able to run it, and run it tough….Very few people, at that age—you can take one out of ten thousand, probably couldn’t do it”—and raised the possibility of additional giveaways to Kim, such as a visit to the White House. Trump dismissed questions about more concrete measures, such as inspections and how he would measure Kim’s sincerity and progress, by implying that the strength of their personal relationship and the president’s deal-making prowess would lead to denuclearization. And the president seemed to take Kim’s word for it, saying that Kim “said we have never gone this far. I don’t think they’ve ever had the confidence, frankly, in a President than they have right now for getting things done and having the ability to get things done. And he was very firm in the fact that he wants to do this.” On the way back from Singapore, Trump would tweet, “Just landed—a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” astonishing for its dishonesty or naïveté or both, in accrediting Kim’s recycled talking points, trotted out by the regime over the past two decades to delay and deflect denuclearization, as a national security success.
Although certainly in line with his personal style, Trump’s display of confidence was also a product of what Heuer called “vividness” bias: that “information that people perceive directly, that they hear with their own ears or see with their own eyes, is likely to have greater impact than information received secondhand that may have greater evidential value.” Trump’s personal interaction with Kim, physically and through the letters that Kim would send the president, weighed more in his mind than the cool, objective analyses of his intelligence agencies and the warnings from seasoned national security experts. Trump emphasized his confidence in his success in the ensuing days and months, stating that North Korea was “doing so much. And now we’re well on our way to denuclearization.” He took the opportunity to jab again at our ally South Korea: “I hated [the joint military exercises] from the day I came in. I said, why aren’t we being reimbursed?” Moreover, Trump referred to the joint exercises as “war games,” a favorite term of the North Korean regime because it implies the drills are belligerent and a preparation for invasion.
Kim Jong Un, for his part, said very little in public. Given the fact that he was able to secure statements from Trump that advanced his goal of chipping away at U.S. alliances in the region and obtain recognition as a nuclear weapons power, perhaps Kim perceived that he did not have to offer very much. After having declared the completion of his nuclear weapons program and demonstrated his capabilities, he had little to lose