On June 10, 2018, ASPI President Kevin Rudd spoke with Bloomberg Daybreak: Australia about U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

Rudd emphasizes that the outcome of the summit will be determined by how both parties approach “CVID, comprehensive, verifiable, irreversible, dismantling of the North Korean nuclear arsenal… [and how] that is enforced over time. That is a massive technical challenge, quite apart from a political and foreign policy challenge[s]” that will determine Mr. Kim’s future engagement with the international community.

Rudd also points out that while untraditional, President Trump’s unique diplomatic approach is “how we’ve managed to secure this summit in the first place.” Kim Jong Un won’t have dealt with a foreign leader like Trump before, making the summit “quite a high-stakes game in terms of…interpersonal diplomacy and chemistry.”

Commenting on the outcome of the G7 meeting that preceded the Trump-Kim summit, Rudd notes that having the “West in disarray…from a geo-economic and geostrategic point of view, is exactly” what China and Russia hope for. With regard to the Trump-Kim summit, China is sending symbolic messages that if Kim “makes any big strategic moves, that he’ll do so in concert, ultimately, with Beijing.” (6 min., 37 sec.)

Watch on Bloomberg.