Two summits and a red line

The summit between North and South Korea is to take place today. I won't try to predict the immediate outcomes. I will say that long ago, I read a Tom Clancy novel in which some South Korean generals were said to relish the North's nukes, as the property of a unified Korea. My point is just that the strengths of north and south are complementary - military and economic - and if they worked together, they would suddenly be a major power, even one to rival Japan.

At the same time, Modi and Xi are meeting in Wuhan, somewhat unexpectedly. Last year the Doklam border crisis was resolved in time for the BRICS summit in China. This year, India has revived participation in the Indo-Pacific "quadrilateral" of America, Australia, India, and Japan, that is widely seen as a counter to expanding Chinese influence; but in June, there is a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - formerly centered on China and Russia, recently expanded to include India and Pakistan. So once again, an upcoming summit provides a reason for pragmatic conciliation between the two sides.

Indian hawks are upset, they consider this weakness from Modi (at a time when the Indian media and the Congress party are also agitating against Modi's party as anti-woman and anti-Muslim). As for China, one doesn't hear criticism of Xi, but he did just have a phoney "trade war" with Trump in which China made concessions as well as imposing counter-tariffs. So both powers have their issues to navigate right now.

Obama's 2015 nuclear deal with Iran - his big attempt to fix things in the Middle East, that was immediately followed by the Russian intervention in Syria - is considered in question, first on May 12, later in July. The crux of the deal was that economic sanctions against Iran would be ended, if Iran allowed verifiable restrictions on its nuclear program.

Trump has been establishing his own "red lines". He is generally not interested in regime change. He wants US forces out of Syria (though perhaps to be replaced by Arab and Turkish forces under the control of the emerging "Sunni NATO"). But he was willing to bomb the Syrian chemical weapons infrastructure. So we may say that he retains America's status as a protector of Israel, and the key issue is WMDs in Syria and Iran.