With a new round of fanfare and breathless discussions of historical significance, President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un are in Vietnam ahead of the second summit between the two leaders. The goal for the meetings, set to take place Wednesday and Thursday, is the same as it was at the summit in Singapore last summer: to secure an agreement on North Korean denuclearization.
But as he enters a second round of one-on-one dealmaking likely to fall short of full denuclearization, Trump should pick no agreement over a bad one.
At the most basic, the only reason the president of the United States should be willing to sit down with a murderous authoritarian leader like Kim is because there is some tangible gain to U.S. security to be achieved. Anything short of that, such as a long-sought end to the Korean War or sanctions relief, without a robust agreement on nuclear arms, would be a victory for North Korea.
That must be avoided. Making a deal with Kim that does not address the nuclear threat posed by the rogue state but that grants concessions would legitimize North Korea’s nuclear program, make a substantive future deal more difficult (if not impossible), and, most importantly, fail to safeguard U.S. interests.
Given those consequences, if Kim proves unwilling commit to verifiable and measurable denuclearization, Trump should drive the sort of hard bargain he has built his reputation around — even if that means only the promise of more talks.
Although that’s a tough sell to media and supporters and lacks the perfect photo-op of beaming handshakes with a backdrop of flags, no deal is also better than a bad deal for Trump politically. Agreeing to more talks leaves open the possibility of a real foreign policy victory and a substantive North Korea deal in the future. For Trump, facing seemingly ever-growing domestic difficulties, that is not an opportunity to be squandered in the name of a few headlines about a deal that accomplishes little.
For Trump and the United States, agreeing to a bad deal is worse than coming back to Washington with no deal. If Kim isn’t prepared to commit to denuclearization in Vietnam, Trump must not agree to new concessions.
