The Democratic criticism of Trump’s behavior in Singapore has two main parts. The first is that Trump made big concessions and got little in return. “What the United States has gained is vague and unverifiable at best,” scolded Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “What North Korea has gained, however, is tangible and lasting.” What Schumer means is that Trump agreed to meet North Korea’s leader, something other presidents have not done, and to suspend military exercises with South Korea while Kim agreed to only ambiguous, unspecific language about denuclearization.

But by looking at the summit in isolation, Schumer is missing the larger tradeoff. Why might North Korea pose a threat to the United States? Because it has nuclear weapons that it may soon be able to place on missiles able to reach America. That’s why U.S.–North Korean relations last year fell into crisis. Pyongyang was making what The Washington Post called “astonishing improvements in North Korea’s ballistic-missile program,” and Trump responded by threatening war.

North Korea ended that crisis in April. Kim publicly announced a halt to North Korea’s nuclear tests and its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests even though experts have detected no evidence that Pyongyang can yet put a nuclear weapon on a missile able to hit the U.S. Schumer can dismiss that as “vague and unverifiable.” But it’s hugely important.

According to Leon Sigal, the director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, Kim did that because he wants a fundamentally different relationship with the United States. During the Cold War, Pyongyang maintained good relations with both the Soviet Union and China, and played the two against each other to maximize its independence. Since then, the USSR’s demise has made North Korea overwhelmingly dependent on Beijing, its only significant ally. And Kim, Sigal argues, like his father and grandfather, doesn’t like that. He fears the United States. But he also wants a rapprochement with the United States—and through that, with America’s allies Japan and South Korea—because he believes his country will be stronger, and his regime more secure, if North Korea has more than one powerful friend.

The Singapore summit showed Kim that Trump is open to that. And by doing so in such a dramatic way, Trump makes it easier for Kim to push denuclearization at home. By getting the summit, Kim can tell his generals—who have labored for decades building the North’s nuclear program—that his strategy is working. Trump shook his hand.

That wasn’t Trump’s only concession, of course. He also agreed to suspend American military exercises with South Korea. And he scandalized Democrats and many pundits by calling those exercises “provocative,” which is how North Korea describes them. But many of the exercises are indeed provocative. They simulate the invasion of North Korea and the decapitation of its regime. And they create pressure on the North to respond with provocative actions of its own. Cancelling them makes it easier for Kim to maintain his freeze on nuclear and missile tests, and move toward a freeze on the creation of the fissile material necessary for a bomb.