Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un the big winners in summit with Donald Trump
If the goal is to begin to unravel the US-Japan and US-South Korea alliances, this is the way to launch the process, former US diplomat Evans Revere says
Score one for China, the US’s rival. The US’s friends, Japan and South Korea, didn’t do so well. The biggest winner from President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — aside from Kim himself — was unquestionably the government of President Xi Jinping, which had been advocating the very process that Trump has now embarked upon. In talks with Kim on Tuesday in Singapore, Trump committed to an open-ended negotiating process and said the US would also suspend military exercises with South Korea. Given that North Korea has halted missile and nuclear tests, that amounted to the dialogue and "suspension-for-suspension" model that China has advocated for years. For good measure, Trump again called Xi a close friend and thanked him for China’s role in strengthening sanctions against North Korea. Xi’s presence hung over Tuesday’s talks: China’s leader met Kim twice in recent weeks and an Air China jet ferried the North Korean ruler to Singapore from Pyongyang on June 1...
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