In the News

The Singapore Summit Surprise

Authors Lawrence Korb and Matthew Feng discuss why China's efforts to establish relations with North Korea before concrete steps are taken toward denuclearization pose a threat to U.S. national security.

The highly anticipated summit in Singapore on June 12 fell woefully short on substance and undermined American national security. While an agreement to complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) between American and North Korean officials was nothing but a pipe dream, there was hope that President Donald Trump would be able to extract significant commitments from Kim Jong-un in return for simply agreeing to meet him. Instead, North Korea walked away with major unilateral concessions, including the freeze on joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises by the United States—which played right into the hands of the Chinese-promoted “freeze for freeze” strategy and cast doubt over American security guarantees to our allies across the region.

The above excerpt was originally published in The National Interest. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Lawrence J. Korb

Former Senior Fellow

Matthew Feng