There was cause for relief among Hawaii residents at the conclusion of Tuesday’s summit meeting convened by President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Only a few months earlier, a nuclear threat seemed credible enough to generate an unnecessary panic among locals and tourists when, on Jan. 13, state emergency response teams botched a missile alert drill.
So a brief, exceedingly cordial talk that ended in a signed “denuclearization” statement — even one devoid of critical details — should leave this state a little less worried about a return to the hair-trigger hostilities between the two countries of a year ago. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA), which issued the false alarm while ramping up emergency planning for a North Korean threat, has reason to be more circumspect.
That said, the time for exhaling still lies a long way off — particularly because of all that was left blank. With the recent military rebranding of the Oahu-based defense structure as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Hawaii now sits at the helm of an operation that’s more far-reaching, and faced with evolving security hot spots.
Of these, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is among the most tempestuous. The U.S. and Hawaii would be well-advised to maintain a wary posture while a full negotiations process plays out. As it is, nobody really knows what Kim means by “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
This means the proposal to upgrade radar systems at the U.S. Missile Defense Agency installation above Kaena Point should remain on the table. Also, the suspension of the U.S. presence in South Korea and long-established calendar of training exercises there, as suggested by President Donald Trump, would be premature.
The president called the exercises, held each March and August, “very provocative.”
“We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money,” Trump said during the post-summit press conference. The caveat: “Unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should.”
South Korean allies and the Pentagon itself appeared flummoxed by this, which should give the president pause. So far, according to media reports, the South Korean Defense Ministry has said only that the government is investigating what the president meant.
A U.S. Forces Korea spokeswoman, meanwhile, said that the Pentagon would “continue with our military posture until we receive updated guidance from the Department of Defense and/or Indo-Pacific Command.”
The lack of clarity and the president’s own ambiguous language should allow enough wiggle room to walk back any commitments that are not, as Trump likes to say, “reciprocal.” Let’s hope so.
Trump did assert that North Korea would destroy a missile site, but neither specified the site nor explained whether the suspension of exercises was contingent on that action or anything else. Meanwhile, Kim got much of what he wanted, at least for now — status, recognition and equal treatment.
Still, the fact that the meeting happened at all instills more hope that North Korea eventually can evolve into a country fit to join the community of nations. The unconventional approach of the two leaders may open new avenues for progress that the conventional approach precluded.
But now that the pomp and circumstance have passed, what matters is the painstaking diplomatic process of negotiating a settlement. Those who have a stake in peace in the region — that’s all of us, but South Korea most of all — must work diligently toward moving the region further away from the brink.
Then perhaps, from Seoul to Honolulu, we can all exhale.
