Six on Singapore Summit: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's summit of friendliness; What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractibl
philip panaritis
"Trust takes time
An important first step has been taken, but trust takes time and, as is well known, the devil is in the details of such agreements — as demonstrated by the laboriously negotiated Iran nuclear deal that Trump overturned. But if the Korean Peninsula finds peace in the mid-term, then the question of how the US intends to position itself in Asia in the future will certainly become louder.
Economically, the US can no longer oppose future superpower China as much; the economic ties and dependencies between China and its Asian neighbors are too close. In terms of security policy, however, the US continues to see itself as a peacekeeping power that must put China, which is becoming increasingly self-confident, in its place.
At the Singapore Summit, Trump was once again able to highlight the central role of US as a world power on a large stage. When US warships patrol through the still-open sea routes in Asia or show up in friendly ports, the message is always the same: We oppose rivals like China and we stand by our partners. But doubts are growing as to whether the US would, indeed, send young soldiers into battle as it did in the Korean War to fight for freedom and democracy on the other side of the world and possibly die as well.
With his "America First" maxim, punitive tariffs and numerous breaches of contract, Trump has not necessarily built-up trust in Asia either. And so, in addition to all the symbolic politics, the historic Singapore Summit once again marks the beginning of the end of the United States as the world's policeman and a reliable peacekeeping power."
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"Trump’s tweets were what first reminded me of the Kaiser. Wilhelm was a compulsive speechmaker who constantly strayed off script. Even his staff couldn’t stop him, though it tried, distributing copies of speeches to the German press before he’d actually given them. Unfortunately, the Austrian press printed the speeches as they were delivered, and the gaffes and insults soon circulated around Europe. “There is only one person who is master in this empire and I am not going to tolerate any other,” Wilhelm liked to say, even though Germany had a democratic assembly and political parties. (“I’m the only one that matters,” Trump has said.) The Kaiser reserved particular abuse for political parties that voted against his policies. “I regard every Social Democrat as an enemy of the Fatherland,” he said, and he denounced the German Socialist party as a “gang of traitors.” August Bebel, the Socialist party leader, said that every time the Kaiser opened his mouth, the party gained another hundred thousand votes.
When Wilhelm became emperor, in 1888, at twenty-nine years old, he was determined to be seen as tough and powerful. He fetishized the Army, surrounded himself with generals (though, like Trump, he didn’t like listening to them), owned a hundred and twenty military uniforms, and wore little else. He cultivated a special severe facial expression for public occasions and photographs—there are many, as Wilhelm would send out signed photos and portrait busts to anyone who’d have one—and also a heavily waxed, upward-turned moustache that was so famous it had its own name, “Er ist Erreicht!” (It is accomplished!)"
