What does Kim really want? Trump, Pence and Bolton won't let us know.

What does the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un really want? We don't know, simply don't know. In suddenly agreeing to talks with the US, perhaps the most remarkable volte-face of the new century, a huge factor could have been at play in the mind of this guy that used to sport a very bad haircut. A factor, or several factors. Things we could only guess. It might have even been a dream: after all without a dream we wouldn't have had something, a movement as momentous as Christianity. At least in its present form.
There are a lot of things we do not know. We do not know  whether his hand was forced by crippling US sanctions, severe penalties that have brought the at-best crawling economy to a coma. Made more so by the fact that China that used to supply some oxygen have decided to cut some gas, thinking it more profitable to bow to US pressure that to bow to some nebulous friendship. Chinese-style economic reforms are just across the border and these might have appealed to him quite strongly, a panacea to some future turbulence and insurrection that might sweep his dynasty out of power: reforms that will never happen with sanctions in place. It might be that he got his inspiration by simply gazing across the border, seeing the development and affluence his foes and kinsmen in South Korea are basking in. It might be he was simply indulging himself in some diplomatic tomfoolery and that he was as interested in peace as Harvey Weinstein was interested in women dignity, confirming what the often tactless Vladimir Putin said was the resolve of the pariah state to eat grass rather than give up nuclear weapons. Then his influential, blushing sister, Kim Yo-jong, could have been whispering some filial softness into his ears. He might even know that the much touted nuclear weapons were not as perfect and developed as we have been made to believe, in no shape or condition or advancement to threaten South Korea, let alone the US. He might be genuinely interested in peace, secretly coveting the sure Nobel Prize that will come to him by pulling off the twin magic of unification and denuclearization.
Answers we would have surely obtained at the June 12, US-North Korea summit in Singapore, a coming together that would have laid bare precise intentions on both sides of the divide. A summit that would have been victory for all of us, those confirming suspicions or confirming expectations. The tone here is a bit fatal because the summit looked increasingly to be in jeopardy, judging by recent comments from both sides of recent. Now President Trump has decided to pull out of it outright. None of the two sides wins laurels for tact and subtlety but North Korea is the bull in the China shop and Trump's aides seemed to be nursing the habit of chasing it away with a pepper spray. The trouble with this administration is that there are too many hawks in in. Hawks snatch things and what is being snatched now is defeat from the jaws of victory. Victory that the highly anticipated summit would have given us. Whether those who suspect or anticipate.
There is no doubt Trump really wanted the summit. After such petty scandals at home, he needed the big diversion the summit would give him. It did not matter whether it was successful or not. The fact that it is happening alone would have been a very big step for him.  It seemed the loud-mouthed hawks that fly around him had different things in mind. Kim has a big chip on his shoulder but Bolton, architect on the infamous Iraq weapons of mass destruction, should have known linking denuclearization to Gaddafi of Libya was going to be a mammoth faux-pas. Even less subtle threats were ratcheted up by the Vice-President, Mike Pence, in a recent interview with Fox News. Pepper spray, pepper spray in the whole shop, everywhere.
The popular author, John Grisham, in the run-up to the polls that brought Trump to power campaigned vogorously for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and when asked about a year later if he had reasons to change his mind, he said no. The only thing missing to confirm his misgivings was a crisis. Which he was sure the president would mismanage. Trump is capable of mismanaging peace either.