Was the summit with Kim Jong-un a diplomatic breakthrough or a fool’s errand?

The summit in Singapore was, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, not the end of isolation. But it is, perhaps, the beginning of a new relationship with North Korea, the US, and the world.

Candide, the hero of Voltaire’s 1759 satire, was educated in Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh’s castle in Westphalia. There, Dr. Pangloss taught him to believe that ours is the “best of all possible worlds.” 

Republicans who spent eight years critical of then President Barack Obama’s so-called appeasement policy strained on Tuesday to find the diamond in the rough in President’s Trump’s initial agreement with dictator Kim Jong Un to ease tensions with North Korea.