Trump-kim summit’s collapse exposes the risks of one-to-one diplomacy

Over the past quarter-century, three American presidents have tried cajoling, threatening and sabotaging North Korea in its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. Eventually each turned to negotiations, convinced that North Korea would surely choose economic benefits for its populace over the bomb.

President Trump was the fourth to test that proposition, but with a twist: Engaging in the sort of direct talks that his predecessors shunned, the president traveled 8,000 miles for his second summit meeting in less than a year with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, betting that his self-described skills as a master negotiator would make all the difference.

As it turned out, they didn’t. The meeting in Vietnam ended in shambles on Thursday when Mr. Kim insisted on a full lifting of sanctions, according to Mr. Trump, and would not agree to dismantle enough of his nuclear program to satisfy American demands. The North Koreans later contradicted Mr. Trump, saying they had demanded only a partial lifting of sanctions, but they confirmed that they had offered to dismantle their main nuclear site, at Yongbyon.

The split underscored the risk of leader-to-leader diplomacy: When it fails, there are few places to go, no higher-up to step in and cut a compromise that saves the deal.

In this case, the price may be high — especially if Mr. Kim responds to the failure by further accelerating his production of nuclear fuel and a frustrated Mr. Trump swings from his expressions of “love” for the North Korean leader and back to the “fire and fury” language of early in his presidency.

“No deal is better than a bad deal, and the president was right to walk,” said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“But this should not have happened,” he said. “A busted summit is the risk you run when too much faith is placed in personal relations with a leader like Kim, when the summit is inadequately prepared, and when the president had signaled he was confident of success.”

The outcome on Thursday took everyone by surprise. Mr. Trump was so convinced a deal was in the offing that the White House had announced that a “signing ceremony” would be held immediately after a warm lunch between the two leaders. But no one ever sat down at the elegantly set table in the century-old Metropole Hotel, and there was no signing ceremony because there was no communiqué to sign.

For his part, Mr. Kim seemed to think he had Mr. Trump exactly where he wanted him: Desperate for a deal, and in need of a headline-making victory after the devastating testimony on Monday of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer. If so, Mr. Kim clearly miscalculated. “Trump could have had a small deal,” Joseph Yun, the former State Department special envoy for North Korea, said after the collapse on Thursday. “Close a few sites, and lift a few sanctions. But because of Cohen, the president needed a big deal” — one that traded sanctions relief for the mass dismantlement of nuclear infrastructure that it took the North Koreans the better part of 40 years to construct.

In the short run, the damage from the failed meeting is likely to be considerable, and not just to Mr. Trump’s dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize, which he asked Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to nominate him for.

The risk now is that having placed their personal imprimatur on the negotiations, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim will be tempted to raise the pressure on each other.

That could herald a new era of nuclear tensions, at a moment when a major arms control deal with Russia has been declared dead, when India and Pakistan are once again reminding the world of the risks when two nuclear-armed states start skirmishing, and [when Trump has already withdrawn from an internationally-endorsed Un-sponsored nuclear deal with Iran].

History suggests that the North Koreans may try to pressure Mr. Trump by escalating. And they have the opportunity: Mr. Trump not only left Hanoi early, but he also left without any agreement for a “freeze” on continued North Korean production of nuclear material. That means that the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal will continue to increase in size as negotiations drag on.

In retrospect, there were warning signs that things were going south.

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to Pyongyang to turn a vaguely worded agreement to pursue denuclearization struck at the June meeting in Singapore into reality, Mr. Kim declined to see him. When he returned, he got an audience — but no inventory of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, its production facilities and its missiles. Without that, there was no way for the two sides to agree on a timetable for dismantlement.

For months, the North declined to deal with the State Department’s special envoy, Stephen Biegun. And when the North Koreans did, they explored many options, but made clear sanctions relief had to come first. Mr. Trump made his own situation worse. He kept repeating that there was “plenty of time” to reach an agreement, taking all the urgency out of the issue.

And on Wednesday night, when the two men met again at the Metropole, it was clear from the body language that something had changed since their first warm embrace in Singapore eight months ago. By Mr. Trump’s account, Mr. Kim would not take up such issues until the world lifts the economic pressure on North Korea. “He wants the sanctions off,” he said.

Now the question is whether Mr. Trump will continue his form of personal-relationship diplomacy or decide that the risks are too great, and that he should return to the step-by-step approach most of his predecessors used.

* Excerpts from an article first published by The New York Times.