The pieces of the jigsaw are falling into place on the Korean Peninsula. But the overall picture — a denuclearized North Korea, a nuclear-weapon-free zone for all of Northeast Asia and a U.S. withdrawal from East Asia — remains fuzzy.
Reaction to the March 8 announcement of a summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un was mixed. Some thought Trump's threats of "fire and fury" had spooked Kim into a climbdown. Others argued a one-on-one meeting with the U.S. president will confer legitimacy on the North Korean leader as an equal.
Kim's trip to Beijing on March 25, accompanied by his wife, to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping caught the world similarly unawares. Commentators are again divided whether it signifies that Trump's strategy of bluster and threats is producing results, frightening Kim and China — the enabler and protector of North Korea's nuclear weapons program — to call a halt to it.