Trump’s giveaways to North Korea are a sign of the US’ diminishing presence on the world stage

Douglas H. Paal says in the eagerness to make a deal and woo American voters, Trump has further chipped away at the US’ global standing and undermined national security

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Donald Trump is presiding over America’s retreat from its global role in security and trade. Illustration: Craig Stephens

Published: 2:01am, 14 Jun 2018Updated: 2:01am, 14 Jun 2018

With the conclusion of the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, most rational observers note that the spectre of unnecessary conflict that haunted 2017 has been replaced by a peaceful process to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat that may take years to unfold. That is the good news. The bad news is that Donald Trump has also signalled his intention to preside over America’s retreat from its post-war role in security and trade, introducing new and profound insecurity into the region and the world.

At the end of the summit, the two leaders signed a four-part joint statement that does not stand out significantly from any of the agreements reached in previous diplomacy with Pyongyang, leaving huge work for both sides’ negotiators on the possibilities of declaring, inspecting, destroying and preventing North Korea’s future development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. The United States made those earlier agreements without rewarding the North’s leader with recognition and a presidential meeting, which it did this time.

Meanwhile, Trump accepted the offer originally suggested by China that the US and North Korea suspend their tests and military exercises – the so-called freeze-for-freeze (or suspension-for-suspension) proposal that had been repeatedly rejected previously by the US.

The reason the US previously rejected the freeze-for-freeze was that it would unilaterally undermine South Korean and American readiness to defend against conventional, not nuclear, conflict. Korean troops are drafted and American forces rotate in and out of Korea.

If they do not exercise together while the North maintains its outsize and stable conventional forces, they will lose combat capability relative to the North. This suspension was therefore a unilateral concession by Trump to the North, without consulting the South.

China’s role on the Korean peninsula has, meanwhile, been re-energised. Beijing successfully marginalised itself with the North through its effective support of strict UN sanctions and with the South through informal but effective sanctions against South Korea’s legitimate efforts to defend itself against the North’s missiles. Now Beijing is very much back in the game.