But maybe worse
the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
It included commitments by North Korea to ‘‘abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes’’, as well as to readmit inspectors. Tuesday’s statement made no mention of inspectors.
‘‘Well, you have a different administration, you have a different president, you have a different secretary of state,’’ Trump said on Tuesday, when asked why he thought this attempt on North Korea would turn out differently.
Trump said verification processes had been discussed at the summit, and that Kim understood it would involve accepting large numbers of US and international personnel.
Other commitments also didn’t make it into the text, he said, including his own plan to halt ‘‘war games’’ with South Korea. He said Kim told him he had just destroyed a missile engine testing site.
Yet Kimball is worried by the difficult history of negotiations with North Korea, combined with the lack of any timetable or road map for further steps in the latest agreement.
‘‘At best this is a tentative beginning down a road that will take many years,’’ he says. ‘‘It doesn’t spell out the pacing or sequencing for action-for-action steps, it does not – and nor did President Trump in his press conference – suggest they have agreed definitions on what denuclearisation entails and what creating a peace regime specifically entails.’’
Michael Kovrig, senior adviser for northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group, is puzzled, too, that the statement includes no formalised commitment to the nuclear and missile-test freezes that Kim has already unilaterally announced. He says the language of the document makes it clear the two sides still haven’t bridged longstanding differences over what denuclearisation really means.
‘‘It was a positive sentiment for a photo op, but it is not meaningful progress from past agreements,’’ Kovrig says.
Still, it is too early to judge the summit either way, he believes. The broad language could pave the way for the kinds of victories Trump is already claiming, though over a years-long, stepby-step process.
If, as Trump said he sensed on Tuesday, Kim wants the grand bargain of disarmament for economic integration, the personal endorsement from the two leaders on negotiations may be all that counts.
In his annual New Year speech in January, Kim told his countrymen the generationslong effort to construct a nuclear deterrent was complete, meaning his government could focus fulltime on developing the economy. Still, he offered no indication he planned to give up his arsenal, which he has called a ‘‘treasured sword’’.
To former South Korean foreign minister Yoon Young Kwan, Trump’s attempt to start at the top with a political rather than narrowly military approach to North Korea nevertheless sets it apart from all that went before.
‘‘North Korea is a small and weak country surrounded by big powers, and that has made North Koreans paranoid about their own national security and develop nuclear weapons,’’ Yoon says.
‘‘President Trump, for the first time in 20 or 30 years of diplomatic negotiations with North Korea, began to take this kind of political approach and try to tackle the root cause of this problem, which is high levels of mutual distrust.’’ – Bloomberg