What a Trump-Kim deal may look like

The on-again, off-again summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un now appears increasingly likely to take place — but it’s not yet clear what kind of agreement, if any, the two leaders will be able to reach.

North Korea has ruled out the so-called “Libya model” where it loads its nuclear programme on to planes bound for the US right away, with Kim saying Thursday the issue should be “solved on a stage-by-stage basis”. Trump insists that the end goal is denuclearisation, but has left the door open to a phased approach. The most likely outcome may be an agreement to keep talking.

Under such a deal, North Korea could announce an extended moratorium on nuclear and missile testing in exchange for modest sanctions relief. The US may also want any agreement to explicitly mention shorter-range missiles so as not to jeopardise alliances with Japan and South Korea, both of which are vulnerable to attack.

Denuclearisation is the biggest sticking point. To do so, they would need to emerge with “a clear sense of what the diplomatic pathway is” for achieving complete and verifiable denuclearisation, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, senior research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center.

A good deal for the US would eliminate or cap production of North Korea’s classes of intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as shorter-range missiles that would be used in an attack on Japan or South Korea.

North Korea could also agree to limit the size of its stockpile of fissile material used for making nuclear weapons. Such a move would need to be accompanied by credible verification measures and assurances that North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear plant had ceased production. The facility also could be slated for eventual dismantlement.

Trump could offer Kim relief from the tightest economic sanctions the US has imposed on North Korea in decades. He could also reduce the number of US troops in South Korea, and agree to limit the size and scope of its military exercises. North Korea would likely be expected to curtail its military drills in return.

The biggest risk for the US is that Trump simply concedes too much in return for too little, limiting leverage for pushing future steps toward denuclearisation. Past deals have fallen apart due to disputes over inspections and the delivery of promised economic aid. And implementation of any deal is likely to stretch beyond the term of Trump, who can stay in power until January 2025 if he manages to win re-election, while Kim faces no term limits.

The two leaders might even bond, which could be more decisive than any written declaration, according to William McKinney, a retired Army colonel who spent more than 40 years involved in U.S.-Korea military relations and planning. There’s still a risk the meeting never even happens, and if it does, it could simply fall apart. Trump’s mercurial negotiating approach has yet to prove effective in reaching new deals on the global stage — if anything so far he’s proved far more adept at cancelling agreements than creating them.

Trump risks being cast as the spoiler if he pushes too hard. “If Trump gets a big piece of the nuclear pie of North Korea and he turns it down, there’s a risk that we’ll look like we were the stubborn belligerent party, and North Korea was the reasonable party”, said Patrick Cronin, director of the Center for a New America Security’s AsiaPacific security programme.