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t was just under two years ago that US Presidential election winner Donald Trump indicated that he would break the then 63-year stalemate of the Korean War and "remove the threat" to the US of North Korean antipathy, backed by nuclear weapons.
His resounding coup de main promised to transform the strategic framework of north-east Asia and Eurasia, but, by August 2018, much of his work lay in ruin.
Pres. Trump did, as promi sed, profoundly break that stalemate, with the enthusiastic connivance of North Korean (DPRK) leader Kim Jong-Un, and - when he won the South Korean polls of May 9, 2017 - South Korean (ROK) Pres. Moon Jae-In. It is not insignificant that these two Korean leaders had each harbored a lifetime of distrust of the United States, and yet it was a transformative US President who gave them the strategic opening they each sought.
Trump captured both skeptical Korean leaders with a speed which clearly took Beijing by surprise.
Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump spent 2017 and early 2018 building their strategic positions so that they could then negotiate with a semblance of parity; with both having something to lose and something to gain. This entailed an escalation of rhetoric and demonstrations of military prowess and readiness on both sides. This theater - which included the demonstration of credible capabilities (some of which had not been completed on the DPRK side before that) - was completed by early 2018.
Thus Trump and Kim were in broad accord by the time they met in Singapore on June 12, 2018, even though, by that time, People's Republic of China (PRC) Pres. Xi Jinping had recovered from the demarche surprise which Trump had stolen from him....