Home GRASP GRASP/Korea Second Trump-Kim summit seen coming as North Korea continues to 'nuclearize'

Second Trump-Kim summit seen coming as North Korea continues to 'nuclearize'

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WASHINGTON/SEOUL – President Donald Trump is set to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in less than three weeks, yet the biggest question hanging over…
WASHINGTON/SEOUL – President Donald Trump is set to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in less than three weeks, yet the biggest question hanging over the leaders’ second summit is why they’re even having it.
Since their historic face-to-face meeting in Singapore eight months ago, North Korea has made little progress toward giving up its nuclear weapons and continues to do what it can to evade sanctions. The top U. S. negotiator with Kim’s regime acknowledges that the two sides still don’t agree on what denuclearization might look like or what the U. S. might offer to satisfy him.
Those gaps underscore just how far apart the two sides remain as the clock ticks toward Trump’s second summit with Kim, set for Hanoi on Feb. 27 and 28. The differences have led many of Trump’s critics to argue that the second summit will look a lot like the first, which produced a vague set of principles but little tangible progress.
“Although it would be great if the two sides made progress on slowing North Korea’s nuclear program at the summit, the most likely outcome is rinse and repeat,” said Vipin Narang, a political science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Trump’s approach to the summit underscores the top-down style that’s become one of his hallmarks, upending traditional diplomacy that depends on aides to hammer out agreements for leaders to drag over the finish line.
Trump’s supporters say the U. S. has already achieved a lot — including a suspension of missile tests and the return of U. S. soldiers’ remains — and sacrificed little. Hope for a lasting deal, they argue, is higher than it’s been in years. Trump said as much during his State of the Union address last week:
“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” Trump said as he announced the Vietnam summit. U. S. officials also point out that North Korea is no longer detaining any Americans — and recently released one rather than keep him as a bargaining chip.
North Korea, for its part, can boast that it got Trump to do something: suspend major military drills with South Korea. Before the Singapore summit, Trump agreed to put off annual exercises involving tens of thousands of troops, against the advice of his top advisers and allies Japan and South Korea.

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