Why so much Western disdain for the Trump-Kim summit’s successes in Singapore?

Tom Plate says positive outcomes for North Korea and China in the ‘Peninsula Cup’ don’t make the US and South Korea losers, and the Western media’s reaction betrays a cold-war world view that is out of step with the geopolitical reality

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Published: 2:00am, 19 Jun 2018Updated: 2:10am, 19 Jun 2018

Who won? That a couple of leaders ranked among the least-cuddly on the face of the Earth could produce something of great potential value was – let’s face it – the longest of long shots. But history does not always move in the straightest of lines, and the unusual is often difficult to quickly accept. The cascade of negative reactions from most of the Western media and some public to the Singapore summit agreement is not in itself surprising. What is disturbing is the compulsive rush to turn a positive into a negative.

True, many sentient human beings find it difficult to look in an emotionally detached way at Donald Trump with his gigantic gaffes or Kim Jong-un with his gigantic gulags. But, without at least some measure of detachment, all metrics of discernment evaporate.

Neither the leader of the United States nor the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remotely resembles virtue incarnate.

But virtue incarnate can be overrated – it does not always produce positive results and sometimes does the reverse. Legendary sociologist Max Weber put it this way: “The early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons … it is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.”

The oft-cited example is Winston Churchill (“goodness incarnate”) working with Stalin (“evil incarnate”) against Hitler (“evil beyond incarnate”). Necessity is sometimes the pushiest mother of anti-convention.

The June 12 Singapore summit agreement is further devalued for deficiency of detail. But an abundance of detail can be a ticking bomb in an agreement the success of which is ultimately dependent on political will rather than precision of terms.

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