US President Donald Trump has cancelled his upcoming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which was due to take place in the coming weeks in Singapore. Kim had already suggested that he might not show up to the summit, since he was worried by something a White House staffer said about following “the Libyan model” and the fact that the US Army have been conducted military drills with the forces in South Korea, so Trump has decided to pre-empt it and write him a letter calling the whole thing off before it happens.
The meeting between Trump and Kim would have been a historical moment where the full denuclearisation of Kim’s arms program in Pyongyang would have been discussed.
He was open to it, too. He has already announced to the UN’s aviation authorities that he will no longer be launching any unexpected nuclear tests into people’s flightpaths and he invited the world’s press to come and cover the shutting down of his nuke testing site. Whether or not those plans will go forward with this Singapore summit called off remains to be seen.
During a press conference in the Roosevelt Room following the sending of this letter, Trump admitted that calling off this meeting with Kim would lead to a “tremendous setback” in the relationship between the United States and North Korea, but also promised that if the regime over there did anything “foolish and reckless” in response to the cancellation of the summit, then the armed forces of America would be “ready as necessary” to pounce.
He also took another juncture to announce that the US military are “the most powerful anywhere in the world.”
Trump says he is ‘waiting’ for Kim to come around
The door is not totally closed on a potential meeting of the two leaders to diplomatically discuss the nuke problem. It’s still a crack open, as Trump said that he will be “waiting” for the day when Kim decides to come around and “engage in constructive dialogue and actions” that are conducive to mending the nuclear crisis going on right now.
The tone of the letter that the President sent to the dictator in the North was quite hostile and frustrated.
Sadly, I was forced to cancel the Summit Meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong Un. pic.twitter.com/rLwXxBxFKx
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2018
Trump wrote that while he was “looking forward” to meeting Kim in Singapore, he has decided to cancel, thanks to “the tremendous anger and open hostility” he has been showing in his public addresses recently.
The President believes that due to the timing, the meeting would now be “inappropriate,” and so he can’t in good conscience let it go forward. He concluded the letter by declaring once and for all that “the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.”
The summit was set for the 12th of June
The summit where Trump and Kim were due to meet had been set to take place on the 12th of June in Singapore, and it would have been a historical event in that it would’ve been the first time in history that a President of the United States and a leader of a North Korean regime. It was expected to mark a huge change in the two countries’ relations, with a peace deal being widely expected to result from it.
But now, all of that has gone out the window.
The months of work and careful diplomatic discussions that were slowly and gently bringing the two nations together have all been waste now, as they’re back to square one. It is not yet clear how far back this will set the relationship between the US and North Korea, but it’s certainly in danger. The phrasing of Trump’s letter with aggressive language seems to suggest that he’s on his way back to the back and forth of insults that defined his early interactions with Kim towards the start of his Presidency.
