US-North Korea summit recalls Cold War summit diplomacy

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: Yonhap

Trump and Kim are scheduled to hold a summit in Singapore on June 12, amid hopes that their talks will lay the groundwork for ending decades of hostility and chart a peaceful path to North Korea's denuclearization.

Ahead of the unprecedented talks between the longtime foes, analysts have drawn parallels with Cold War summits, which helped build trust and ease military tensions, though they sometimes ended in vaguely worded agreements.

“I think in some ways we’re in a period similar to 1959, when Eisenhower tried to test Khrushchev by inviting him to Camp David,” said Patrick M. Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “He wanted to see if Stalin’s successor was different and whether Cold War tensions might ease rather than continue to rise.”

“While that tentative summit did not produce any major agreements, it did show that a process could develop, and Kennedy certainly came away with what became the initial building blocks for arms control,” he added.

The summit between Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev took place in a context of deep distrust between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev’s concerns about the invitation to Camp David, the US presidential retreat nestled in the mountains of Maryland, underscored the depth of understanding between the enemies. The Soviet leader later wrote that the summit venue could be a “place where doubters would be isolated.”

Although Eisenhower and Khrushchev failed to produce any concrete agreements, the media still celebrated the “Camp David spirit.” But hopes of improving relations faded after a US spy plane was shot down by Soviet forces in May 1960.

Citing the 1959 summit, Cronin noted that North Korea is not the Soviet Union, a power with which the United States engaged in a decades-long strategic competition.

“The US will not be satisfied with such little progress (from a summit with North Korea) before returning to its strategy of pressure, deterrence and restraint,” the scholar said.

Preparations for the US-North Korea summit on June 12 are being rushed to completion in Singapore. Photo: AP

Other experts have compared the Trump-Kim summit to the 1989 Malta Summit between US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, where they discussed ending the Cold War. The meeting took place less than a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After the summit, Gorbachev told reporters that “threats of force, distrust, psychological and ideological struggles” should be things of the past. In return, Bush said the two sides could transform East-West relations into “long-term cooperation.”

“The Trump-Kim summit in Singapore is as historic as the Malta summit, ushering in the post-Cold War era,” said Kim Youl-soo, a foreign policy expert in Seoul. “That’s because the Singapore summit aims to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue and resolve decades of hostility between Washington and Pyongyang.”

The June 12 summit in Singapore was arranged after the North Korean leader shifted his policy focus to economic development, after years of provocations that raised fears of a nuclear war on the peninsula last year.

Some observers see similarities between Mr Kim's policy shift and former Soviet leader Gorbachev's push for openness.

However, Balbina Hwang, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, points out the difference between Kim and Gorbachev. She says: “Kim was indeed willing to make changes, but these changes were not seen as a lifeline as they were with Gorbachev, but because Kim felt confident enough that he could pursue them and still have control over the outcome, which meant maintaining and actually strengthening the regime and the system of the country, not weakening it.”

Some analysts are wary of drawing any parallels to Cold War summits, citing differences between US-North Korea relations and superpower rivalry. “There is no comparison,” said Peter Joachim Katzenstein, a professor of international studies at Cornell University. “To me, this is a unique situation, not even comparable to Iran.”

Rana Mitter, a British historian, points to the contrast between the Cold War approach to nuclear weapons and the current situation regarding North Korea: “Nuclear arms reduction was a major factor in the Cold War. But back then, there was more concern about reducing the arsenals of the superpowers. Today, there is little discussion about removing weapons from existing nuclear states. Instead, the impetus is to find ways to prevent states such as North Korea and Iran from proliferating. This is a very different dynamic.”