Steak and corn diplomacy

So no banquet for General Kim Yong-chol in this New York apartment where the summit-saving dinner was held between the North Korean former spy chief and the US former spy chief and now Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Steak and corn were on the menu. At least it wasn't the statutory burger and fries, although I suspect General Kim had been longing for a McDonald's. He looks like a Big Mac man to me. So does Pompeo actually. When you have probably the second most powerful North Korean in the same room for dinner, do you ask him how he would like his steak: bloody, rare, medium or well-done? General Kim will have done his homework, and even if he has his steaks well cooked in Pyongyang he wouldn't have wanted to seem out of gastronomic fashion, so I expect he played safe and asked for medium rare. Pompeo would then have asked for the same, for diplomacy's sake if nothing else. Corn is corn, so there isn't much to quibble about there. The key thing is, whether the food was acceptable or not to the stoney-faced North Korean ex-spy chief, how did the chatting go? There are ocasions when being the US Secretary of State must be great fun. There you are, with all that CIA knowledge in your head and you're facing a man who will go back to his boss in Pyongyang with one of two simple messages. No 1: "Chairman Kim, it's thumbs up for the summit." Or No 2: "Chairman Kim, it's all off, the Americans cannot be trusted." That's a heavy burden for Pompeo. He has to get the tone right, the reassurances copper-bottomed but at the same time he needs a pledge about North Korea's nukes. But I doubt General Kim will give too much away. No real detail. General Kim, only used to spying on Americans, not actually talking to them, will be assessing the big man in front of him. They met in Pyongyang, so they do know each other. But he will be asking, can Pompeo be trusted? And, therefore, can Donald Trump be trusted? Well, of course, exactly the same questions will be going through Pompeo's mind. Can his dinner companion be trusted and will Chairman Kim listen to him when he returns to Pyongyang? After two days of talks I reckon each man will come to an historically important conclusion. Pompeo and Kim Yong-chol will sort of quite like each other - not instant friendship and undying affection but respect, curiosity, fascination and a degree of comprehension. It just might work but Pompeo is the leg man in this tricky negotiating. The ultimate test will be when Trump and Chairman Kim meet in Singapore - if they do meet. From the moment they shake hands, it will be about personal chemistry, like when Margaret Thatcher first met Mikhail Gorbachev and announced she could do business with him. Perhaps General Kim will get his American burger at lunch today and after a swift tour of the great New York city will fly back to Pyongyang with a glowing report of peace in our time. It's very unlikely but not impossible. Impressions and chemistry can play a big role at historic moments. And a good burger!

Former North Korean spy chief to get the full treatment

General Kim Jong-chol has never set foot in the United States. So the former North Korean spymaster who has more skeletons in his cupboard than even Donald Trump will be given the full treatment when he arrives from Pyongyang for talks about the on-off-on summit between Trump and his boss, Chaiman (Marshal) Kim Jong-un. It will be quite an eye-opener for Chairman Kim's right-hand man who seems to be present whenever the North Korean leader is doing something in public, like watching another rocket take off over the Sea of Japan. He is deeply into everything that is bad about North Korea - nukes, ballistic missiles, terrorism, smuggling, nuke technology-selling etc etc. So, quite a visitor for Trump. We don't yet know if Trump himself will see General Kim who is flying to New York. A meeting at Trump Towers perhaps? But if Trump does meet him, he will probably grasp the veteran spy with both arms and give him a hug, like he did with Gina Haspel the other day when she was sworn in as the new CIA director. That was a full-throated arms-around hug like you might give to your mother. I suspect Kim Jong-chol would appreciate such a hug as much as Ms Haspel must have done! Trump has said he has got together his finest team to see General Kim. Unfortunately, he can't exclude John Bolton. He is after all his national security adviser even though his left foot is still in his mouth after likening North Korea to Libya. General Kim, being a veteran spy chief, will no doubt give Bolton one of those killer smiles but will focus his main attention on Trump, if he is there, and Mike Pompeo. He and Pompeo have already met and as they both have intelligence backgrounds, there will be a shared comradeship of sorts. The big question is: has General Kim come to Washington with a genuine offer on nukes or is it all part of a cunning plan to make sure the summit in Singapore takes place on June 12th but without the agenda being set in concrete. Trump has aready dropped his initial insistence that all North Korea's nukes must be on the table, suggesting it could be a phased denuclearisation. One think-tank expert in Washington has predicted it could take 20 years. Trump, hoping for a mighty legacy coup, won't want to wait that long. Especially since he may only have another 32 months left of his presidency!!

Ten months to Brexit!

Remainers and Leavers are still as divided as ever and it's just ten months to go before Britain exits membership of the European Union. Although a million words have been spoken and millions and millions of words have been written about the negotiations and the likely future of this country, does anyone from the Prime Minister down to lesser mortals like me have any real clue about what life is going to be like? No is the answer. Theresa May is still struggling to get across her idea that we should be half in and half out of the EU customs union, and no government ministers have yet adequately explained how we are going to benefit from a whole range of new trade deals around the world once we are unfettered by EU regulations. The New York Times today claims the UK is more like the US with cuts in social benefits and extreme poverty. The New York Times has traditionally taken a perverse position on the UK, reporting on our difficulties as if we are about to become a Third World country, riven by violent crime, class divisions and misery. Perhaps there are some American reporters who still believe that London is affected by smog which, of couse, hasn't been the case since the 1950s. Actually this country is still one of the best places to live, immigration is a big political issue but on the whole we all get on pretty well, we are a tolerant nation and the best multicultural cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham are thriving. But Brexit has created such uncertainty that the fear is this great country will somehow be diminished, that we will no longer play a role in world affairs and that the EU members will laugh at us as we struggle to survive in a new economic climate. Despite the fact I voted Remain, and despite the continuing doubts about the current government's ability to produce a decent and manageable deal with the EU bureaucrats, I believe Britain will still be a wonderful place to live and bring up children. The New York Times will be proved wrong. And I haven't mentioned Trump once!

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are made for each other

The Korean story is getting crazier by the day. First it's on, the next it's cancelled and then it may be on after all. The June 12th summit of course. I would say the odds are 4 to 3 the Trump/Kim summit WILL take place on June 12th, unless someone idiotic in Washington says something like: "If Kim doesn't give up his nukes on day one we will probably use the Iraq 2003 model". The best thing for everyone now will be total diplomatic silence. If it's on, it's on and nothing more need be said. If there are pre-conditions let them be sorted out quietly without any public statements, and that includes no tweets from Trump. Just for once, forget that social media exists. I doubt this will happen because Trump and John Bolton and others find it impossible to keep their mouths closed. But for the sake of what could still be a Big Event, they need to restrain themselves and leave all the work to the diplomats and spooks who are currently talking to North Korea. Judging by the very limited television reports that came out of the supposed demolition of the North Korean nuclear test site, this is a country which is still locked in a sort of Kafkaesqe universe where officials dressed in Maoist boilersuits have absolutely no clue about how the rest of the world works. Their treatment of the visiting reporters was totally bizarre. They showered the reporters with eight-course banquets but then took fright when the television crews dared to take pictures of a beach or a half-built hotel or....well anything. This is truly old school Communism. They imagine all outsiders are aliens. They simply cannot understand the value of good publicity. They are so scared that a picture of a deserted beach will provoke the wrath of their leader that their only response is to order the cameras to be switched off and any tapes to be destroyed. These are weird people, and their leader is the weirdest of the lot. So I'm thinking Trump and Kim are going to get on like a half-built hotel on fire. Trump after all denounced reports in the New York Times about the North Korea situation and claimed everything was totally false. Made up. Fake news. But the report was based on a briefing by a White House official who had been delegated - by the White House - to speak to the press. This is pure North Korea. Trump is going to feel at home when he meets Kim. They are going to swap stories about how tough it is to be a leader like two paranoid old queens. And they will probably come out with some sort of half-stage, long-term deal that sounds pretty good but actually will let Kim off the hook but still make Trump look resaonably happy. It's all crazy crazy crazy.

Who wins out of the North Korea debacle?

Well nobody actually wins out of the Trump/Kim Jong-un summit that never took place. But who will take some satisfaction out of the cancelled summit? Not Trump because his tactics failed. What about Kim? I think he will feel quietly pleased because he has shown that whatever ultimatums or demands come from Washington he has stood up to the threats. He still has his nuclear weapons, and he probably feels confident that Trump will not dare to resort to military strike action now because he, Kim, has kept the door open to future talks. He has also strengthened his links to Beijing. I think Kim and his aides did what Beijing wanted. President Xi Zinping did not like the way things were going. All that talk of a Nobel peace prize for Trump! Xi put down his marker. He must have told Kim, "This is all going too fast, your nukes are too important for your country's survival, so hang on and wait for another occasion to talk to Trump. Meanwhile follow my orders." So of course Xi Zinping is satisfied. He may have condemned North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme in the past but right now the Chinese leader sees Kim's nukes as a useful leverage against the US. Xi is not interested in a Nobel peace prize but he is interested in Chinese hegemony in the Asia Pacific, and the less influence and power and respect Trump has in the region the better for Beijing. So, yes, Xi is pleased. He will think that Trump has lost and that will make him chuckle. Of course he will pretend still to be Trump's best friend but he will be more concerned about keeping Kim on board. He has certainly achieved that.

Does Trump know what comes next?

Having announced that the summit with Kim Jong-un was cancelled you just hope that Trump had a plan for what comes next. And I don't mean Option B because Option B in Trump's mind is probaby all about taking military action. I mean Stage Two. In other words, taking into account everythng that HAS been achieved and moulding it into something new, not necessarily a summit but definitely hgh-level dialogue to keep the process going. Trump owes the South Korean president that and, indeed the whole Korean Peninsula. What we can't have is all that childish rhetoric again where Trump and "Chairman Kim" mouth off at each other. Having got this far - shared hockey team at the Winter Olympics, Moon and Kim handshake, Trump's acceptance of a summit, Mike Pompeo's two meetings with Kim - all the positive bits can be worked on. Indeed must be worked on. Pompeo is the man for this. He seemed to get on with Kim. The former CIA director should take the lead in bringing Kim back to his senses. Trump's sudden announcement about pulling out of the summit next month was clearly a move by the president to jump first. He knew from the chats between North Korean and US officials that things were going badly. He also had a tip-off from President Moon that Kim was about to pull the plug. So leap in first and make it look very adult and sensible. Kim's great moment, sending a bunch of well-behaved journalists to the mountain nuclear test site to see it blown up - really? - was lost once Trump's letter arrived on Kim's desk. He must have thought: "Why the hell did I bother have all these reporting dogs come to my country?" Still the vey healthy-looking CBS reporter did a fine job pointing out the lovely beaches and the supposed hotel construction going on. So now it's big decision time, Mr President. Send Pompeo back to North Korea and order your cohorts, especially John Bolton, NEVER to mention Libya or Gaddafi again. Let's hope something good can be scraped from the detritus of the abandoned Singapore summit.

What's China up to with North Korea?

Donald Trump said President Xi Zinping was the best poker player in the world. By that he meant you never know what the Chinese leader has in his hands or in his brain or up his sleeve!! Enigmatic and inscrutable are words coined for men like President Xi. So what is he up to right now over the North Korea issue? Clearly he is pulling all the strings attached to Kim Jong-un in the preparations for the summit between him and Trump, or at least the proposed summit. But what don't we know? The answer is we know nothing because everythng is being handled in great secrecy behind the scenes and we can only guess. But I think the Pentagon and the CIA and the massive power of the National Security Agency (NSA) have a pretty good idea what the devious Chinese president is engaged in. The Pentagon, out of the blue, has revoked the invitation it made to the Chinese Navy to join the US Navy and others in an international maritime exercise in the Pacific. China has already taken part twice in these naval exercises. It's all part of relationship-building to improve coordination between the Chinese military and the US military. But suddenly the Pentagon has decided to ban the Chinese navy from taking part. The official reason is that the US is angry over China's continuing militarisation of the sovereignty-disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea, and in particular the deployment of surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles on these atols and the landing, for the first time, of a Chinese bomber on a runway constructed on one of the islands. Well these are good reasons for rescinding the naval exercise invitation. But the timing is significant. We are 20 days away from the planned summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim. This gesture of anger and defiance by the Pentagon is surely also aimed at Beijing for whatever Xi is plotting against the US in connection with the Trump/Kim extravangaza. There is more trouble ahead between now and June 12 and Beijing will be the cause of it. So it would look totally weird for Chinese and American sailors to be carrying out friendly naval duties together in the 2018 Rim of the Pacifc exercise while the Boss in Beijing is carrying on building up bases on these South China Sea islands and setting the agenda for a potentially disastrous summit between Trump and Kim next month. I don't suppose Beijing will worry very much about the cancellation of the naval exercise but Xi and his cohorts might just think: "Hm, what do the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSA know about our plots with Kim Jong-un? Have their spies and intelligence-gathering satellites picked something up which will undermine our plans?" I sincerely hope the Americans have managed to glean some vital intelligence. If they haven't, the inscrutable Xi and his prodigy, Kim Jong-un, will hold all the cards at the Singapore summit.