UPDATE: In an overly optimistic (but still guarded) op-ed on these talks, the New York Times‘s Nicholas Kristof seems to think that the big benefit is that we are moving away from the brink of war. But is that the case? Were we really in danger of an armed conflict? I don’t think so, as Kim Jong-un isn’t suicidal and, crazy though he is, Trump would be insane to launch a first strike, which would lead to the destruction of both North and South Korea. Besides, North Korea has made many agreements before about weapons and nukes in particular, and hasn’t kept any of them.

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I’d like to believe that yesterday’s meeting between Kim Jong-un of the DPRK and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the Demilitarized Zone was a harbinger of peace and prosperity, but that’s what I want to believe, not what I do believe.

Here are the details from CNN:

First, the war has been effectively ended for years except for sporadic and limited skirmishes at the DMZ. The DMZ will remain a heavily guarded border with mines and weapons on the northern edge.If it did not, North Koreans would pour across the border to South Korea. The “ending of the war” is effectively meaningless.

Will the peninsula “unify”? Not on your life. The South isn’t going to accept a joint government, or any dictates by the North; and the North, of course, wants to keep its people under complete and horrible subjugation. That will not change, either.

What about the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”? That’s a laugh. Do you think that the DPRK will give up its nuclear weapons program—its one assurance to its people that it will not be attacked by the U.S.? Remember, too, that there are no nuclear weapons in South Korea—not even American ones. As the Washington Post reported last year:

Since the Korean War, the country has been under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella — an assurance that it would be protected by U.S. nuclear weapons if needed. That safeguard remains even though the United States moved its nuclear weapons out of South Korea in 1991 as part of a bid to persuade North Korea to allow the IAEA to inspect that country’s nuclear sites. At the time, Pyongyang and Seoul also jointly committed to making the peninsula free of nuclear weapons.

We were conned back then, too: part of the continual and canny manipulation of the West by the DPRK. You can read about the North’s continual dissimulation about nukes here.

That US pledge of protecting South Korea won’t change, and we won’t agree that we’ll give up our nukes if the DPRK will, too, because a). they won’t, and b). we have no nukes on the peninsula. But the U.S. does have bombers, submarines, and ICBMs that carry nuclear weapons and can easily reach the North, so the DPRK will be no safer than before.

So what will really change? Perhaps “family visits” will increase, and that’s a good thing. But for meaningful change on the peninsula, I see none. North Korea will continue to develop its nukes, the border will remain sealed, keeping 25 million North Koreans in a state of deprived servitude, and the U.S. presence will continue to “threaten” the North, allowing them to keep their people whipped up. And, despite nothing changing, Trump will of course claim credit for the “good things happening.”

The only real advance that could have come from this meeting would be the elimination of the DPRK’s nuclear program and its unification with the South on terms that would give the North little leverage. That won’t happen. And a mutual “no first strike” announcement won’t stop Kim Jong-un’s development of nukes, which is what we really want.

Meet the new peace—same as the old peace.