Korean Unity Alters Trump Negotiations
WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump lost no time hailing the historic nature of the April 27 meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea. But the gauzy images and vows of peace by Kim Jong-un and his counterpart from the South, Moon Jae-in, have complicated Mr. Trump’s task as he prepares for his own history-making encounter with Mr. Kim.
The two Korean leaders pledged to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons, but they put no timeline on it, nor did they say what a nuclear-free Korea would look like. Instead, they agreed to pursue a peace treaty this year that would formally end the Korean War after nearly seven decades of hostilities.
The talk of peace is likely to weaken the two levers that Mr. Trump used to pressure Mr. Kim. A resumption of regular diplomatic exchanges between the two Koreas will erode the sanctions against the North, while Mr. Trump will find it hard to threaten military action against a country that is talking about peace.
Mr. Trump will have to persuade Mr. Kim to accept “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of North Korea — something that Mr. Kim has shown no willingness to do.
“This summit has put even greater expectations, greater hype and greater pressure on Trump,” said Victor D. Cha, a Korea scholar at Georgetown University in Washington. “He hyped this meeting with his tweets, and now the entire focus is going to be on his negotiating prowess.”
Mr. Trump has betrayed no anxiety as he discussed the challenges of the summit meeting, which is scheduled for late May or early June. He said he would not commit the mistakes of his predecessors, whom he said had showered the North with money and extracted nothing in return.
“The United States has been played beautifully, like a fiddle, because you had a different kind of a leader,” Mr. Trump said.
But some of his aides say privately they worry that the president, with an eye on the history books and a flair for the theatrical, is determined to emerge with a victory, even if it falls short of his stated goals.
Certainly, he seemed beguiled by the imagery of the Moon-Kim meeting. “KOREAN WAR TO END!” he tweeted before 7 a.m. on April 27, a few hours after the leaders shook hands in the Demilitarized Zone.
The next day, Mr. Trump said he had a “very good talk” with Mr. Moon. “Things are going well,” he tweeted. “Time and location of meeting with North Korea is being set.” Later, at a rally, Mr. Trump told supporters that he deserved virtually all the credit for the success of the meeting between the North and the South.
Mr. Trump appears more likely than ever to rip up the Iran nuclear deal as he faces his next deadline of May 12 to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran.
Walking away from one nuclear disarmament deal while trying to strike another would be a trick.
But Mr. Trump is only one of three actors in this drama, and perhaps not the most crucial one. Mr. Moon, a progressive former human rights lawyer, ran for office on a platform of conciliation with the North and has moved aggressively to deliver on that promise. He, not Mr. Trump, has set the pace and terms of the negotiation with the North, though American officials say that Seoul is closely coordinating with Washington.
Mr. Kim, for his part, made a bold bet on diplomacy. His motives for seeking a rapprochement are open to debate. Skeptical analysts said the advancements in North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile program — as much as sanctions or threatened military strikes — made the timing right for an overture. Others say he is replaying the cycle of provocation and conciliation pioneered by his father and grandfather.
Whatever his motives, the 34-yearold dictator has proved to be a remarkably adroit player on the world stage. “If anyone gets credit, it’s Kim Jong-un,” said Daniel R. Russel, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs who is now at the Asia Society. “It’s his show.”
Mr. Kim pledged not to test bombs or long-range missiles, and an end to the North’s longtime insistence that American troops withdraw from the peninsula. But he has made no concessions on his nuclear weapons. The language in his joint statement with Mr. Moon about denuclearization was both vague and familiar to veterans of past negotiations with North Korea.
“He’s gotten all these meetings with world leaders without making any concessions,” said Jung H. Pak, a former C.I. A. analyst. “So far, everything has been no- cost for Kim.”