One of the impressions I got from my recent (and lengthy) Washington stay is that the majority of North Korea watchers, in spite of being critical of the Singapore summit and its meager results, still tend to say that the meeting achieved at least one thing.

It is believed that the Singapore agreement, as nebulous and dubious as it was, removed the threat of war, which loomed large through the year 2017, when Pyongyang and Washington exchanged grave threats on a hitherto unthinkable scale.

They might be right: for the time being, the threat of war has indeed been