Summit collapse exposes risks of diplomacy
Kim sought lift of sanctions; Trump “needed a big deal”
Hanoi, Vietnam Three American presidents have tried cajoling, threatening and sabotaging North Korea’s efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. Eventually each turned to negotiations, convinced that an isolated, broken country would surely choose economic benefits for its starving populace over the bomb.
President Donald Trump was the fourth to test that proposition, but with a twist: Engaging in the sort of direct negotiation 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, it did not. The meeting in Vietnam ended in shambles when Kim insisted on a full lifting of sanctions and, according to Trump, would not agree to dismantle enough of his nuclear program to satisfy U.S. demands. The split underscored the risk of leaderto-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. the media for making a big deal of it — rather than having used the moment to remind the North Koreans that its activities were being intensely monitored, and not just by spy satellites.
And on Wednesday night, when the two leaders 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.
Trump, who said over the weekend that he would be happy just to have a continued ban on missile and nuclear testing, realized that if he acceded to Kim’s demand for an end to sanctions, he would lose whatever leverage the United States possessed.
“I’d much rather do it right than do it fast,” the president told reporters before leaving Hanoi early. conference on Thursday whether Kim had been unwilling to deal with its fate, Trump acknowledged that was one of the problems, along with other facilities “they were surprised we knew.”
“I think it is very positive that the Trump administration sought constraints at previously undisclosed facilities outside Yongbyon,” Robert J. Einhorn, one of the senior arms control experts who worked for the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Preventing North Korea from producing new fuel, he said, “would be a much better indication of North Korea’s willingness to go down the denuclearization track than simply closing Yongbyon, which would not halt their production of all bomb-making nuclear material.”
By Trump’s account, Kim would not take up such issues until the world lifts the economic pressure on North Korea. “He wants the sanctions off,” he said.