The significance of the meeting taking place in Singapore today can’t be overestimated.

As the 34 year old North Korean leader drove into the super-rich island city in his block long motorcade he can’t have helped but be impressed.

It’s a far cry from the Soviet architecture of Pyongyang and it’s something he could aspire to for his dirt poor country, made that way because of his mad drive to become a nuclear power and all the money that involves.

He’s been holed up in the Presidential suite of the Regis Hotel, just around the corner from his diplomatic sparring party Donald Trump who’s taken over the opulent Shangri La.
The meeting they’ll have on the luxurious Singaporean island of Sentosa at a five star hotel will also impress the young leader who has only left his country three times since becoming leaders at the age of 27, seven years ago. Twice to China and once briefly stepping into South Korean across the demilitarised zone a few months back to shake the hand of his counterpart there.

This meeting is being held against a hail of missiles and insults but that fact that it’s being held is significant and probably by an accident on the American side it runs to a theory established by another offbeat President Richard Nixon who extended an olive branch to China almost fifty years ago.

Nixon met with Mao Zedong in 1972, re-establishing diplomatic relations after a 25 year freeze where neither country had anything to do with each other.

Nixon’s Madman theory went something like this. You convince a foreign power of America’s instability and irrationality and they’re only too happy to come to the negotiating table.

It’s doubtful whether this was a deliberate method to madness, that would be crediting Trump’s outbursts with altogether too much rationality.

It’s difficult to see the obstreperous Kim kow towing to the unpredictable Trump and agreeing to give up the very reason why he thinks he’s a superpower – his nuclear arsenal.

But at least they’re talking rather than insulting each other which is a start. If they can get a little more out of it, it’ll be the best 71st birthday present Trump could hope for on Thursday.