wise retreat

Give President Trump some credit. He found a face-saving way to retreat from his threats of "fire and fury." The world can breathe a sigh of relief that there will be no catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula ... at least for a while.

Of course, we wouldn't have been on the edge of the precipice if Trump had followed the normal pattern of building support diplomatically for even tougher sanctions and Chinese pressure on North Korea. He wanted a dramatic event and he paid the price, in preemptive concessions, in order to get it.

This morning he even tweeted "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea" -- a statement that no doubt would surprise intelligence analysts.

Now he owns that statement. He has to deliver, either by concrete actions by North Korea or by changing the definition of a nuclear threat, such as saying that limits on testing of warheads and missiles accomplishes that goal.

Now he owns the Singapore declaration. He has to perform the still-secret promises he made, and he has to tolerate ambiguities in DPRK performance. He made the deal. He has that great personal relationship with Kim. He can't blame anyone else for failure.

The sanctions regime is collapsing and cannot be revived, much less made tougher. Even if North Korea fails to perform, too many horses will have left too many barns for the current restrictions to be re-instituted.