Trump Pulls a "Reykjavik" at Vietnam Summit. Will Phase Two Work as Well as Reagan's?

And will the same critics who attacked Reagan's walk out strategy and also attacked Trump for his admit their mistake if we succeed?

I know they don't teach history in the public schools anymore and what they teach in universities is heavy on propaganda and short on facts so I offer these reflections for those who were deprived of the truth.

Reagan's Reykjavik walkout worked!

Mainstream media spin has it that the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi was a failure.  Many of the news reports use that word. President Trump broke up the meeting early because North Korea insisted on a gradual lessening of sanctions and refused to agree to the program of total denuclearisation that has been the subject of discussions between U.S. and North Korean sides.

But history teaches us the lesson that a walkout, which might be considered a failure at the time, is anything but.  It's another Reagan lesson.  Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev offered a stunning deal on nuclear disarmament if only President Reagan would give up the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) also called "Star Wars."  Despite the Soviets offering Reagan everything else he wanted he walked rather than back out on his core commitment to preserve U.S. defensive developments against missile technology.  That same technology is protecting America today in many ways.

Here's the famous photograph from the Reagan Library summit archive showing a deeply unhappy Reagan. Similar expressions in other official photos recording the scene (1,2,3,4)

Reagan records in his personal diary his thoughts:

Sunday, October 12, 1986

VIEW THE PRESIDENT'S SCHEDULE

Final day & it turned into an all day one even though we’d been scheduled to fly out in early afternoon. Our teams had given us an agreement to eliminate entirely all nuc. devices over a 10 yr. pd. We would research & develop S.D.I. during 10 yrs. then deploy & I offered to share with Soviets the system. This began the showdown. He wanted language that would have killed S.D.I. The price was high but I wouldn’t sell & that’s how day ended. All our people thought I’d done exactly right. I’d pledged I wouldn’t give away S.D.I. & I didn’t but that meant no deal on any of the arms reductions. I was mad—he tried to act jovial but I acted mad & it showed. Well the ball is in his court and I’m convinced he’ll come around when he sees how the world is reacting. On way out I addressed our mil. force & familys at Air base. They were enthused & cheered my decision.

On the journey home aboard Air Force One Reagan and his aides worked out a public relations strategy to put a positive spin on these events. It partially succeeded with the New York Times reporting "Reagan Triumphs From Failure in Iceland." Hard to believe the New York Times reporting this way on Trump's summit with Kim but it shows how far the Times has declined as a newspaper. Other partisan media were less generous. In Rolling Stone we had this:

Reagan Flubs Reykjavik Summit

At his big meeting, the President’s obsession with Star Wars allowed Gorbachev to outmaneuver him on arms control

This just shows that Rolling Stone was headed to the bottom long before they made false accusations of rape at fraternity at the University of Virginia.   

Little more than a year later President Reagan invited General Secretary Gorbachev to the White House where the two signed the Intermediate-Range  Nuclear Forces Agreement. A treaty on which Russian President Vladimir Putin would later cheat and Trump cancel.

President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in the East Room of the White House. 12/8/87.

In the view of many history now records that the Reykjavik summit was not a failure but the moment the Cold War truly ended. Will history repeat itself?

It's quite possible that within a year or so we might have Chairman Kim visiting the White House to sign historic agreements ending the Korean War and a total denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. And wouldn't that be just months before the 2020 election?