President Trump’s special envoy to North Korea says persuading Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons will be a long and grueling process that will require U. S. concessions. That sober assessment means the upcoming summit might succeed where the last one failed.
Persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons will be a long and grueling process that will require President Trump to make significant concessions — and even then, the effort may fail.
That dose of caution from Trump’s special envoy to North Korea, delivered as the two leaders prepare for their second summit, may sound like common sense. But it’s an important and welcome shift in the White House approach.
It means the mood swings of the past, from “little rocket man” to supposed “love letters,” may be over and detailed negotiations can now begin.
Even Trump may have caught the normalcy bug. After his first summit with Kim last June, he boasted — incorrectly — that North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat.” Eight months later, Kim has yet to dismantle any part of his nuclear arsenal.
The president sounds more realistic now. “Decent chance of denuclearization,” he tweeted last month.
That chastened tone reflects White House frustration. After the splashy summit in Singapore, when Trump urged Kim to transform his country into a paradise of beach resorts, U. S. officials pushed for rapid denuclearization talks.
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo pressed Pyongyang for a complete list of its nuclear facilities, including secret sites, as a first step. Kim’s aides rejected the request out of hand. The talks went into a freeze and needed months to get back on track.
“They started out by asking for everything, as you always do in negotiations,” Joel S. Wit, a former U. S. diplomat who negotiated with North Korea in the 1990s, told me.
