Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton at NATO Summit in Brussels, July 12, 2018. Ye Pingfan/Press Association. All rights reserved.
In the United States's entanglements with North Korea and Iran there is a common factor: the current initiative belongs not to Washington but to these renegade states. Where the outlook with Pyongyang is for the moment relatively stable, however, with Tehran it is open to escalating conflict.
The Singapore summit in June between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un was a notable symbolic occasion. But its outcome revealed a sharp contrast between the US president's claim of a personal diplomatic triumph – with talk even of a Nobel peace prize – and the reality (as seen by many observers) of the young chairman being the real victor (see "Kim vs Don: the Singapore sting", 14 June 2018).
