By President Trump’s own description, his summit on Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was meant to be a “getting-to-know-you” meeting — a brief but historic dialogue where the two men could exchange pleasantries and authorize follow-up meetings where the real heavy lifting might occur.
Journalists speculated in the days leading up to Trump’s visit with Kim that he might invite the authoritarian leader to Mar-a-Lago if their initial encounter went smoothly, a gesture others perceive as premature without major concessions from the regime.
But those yearning for another high-stakes meeting between the two leaders might be disappointed once the president returns from Singapore this week, according to national security experts who have closely followed North Korea’s overtures in the past and are familiar with Trump’s priorities.
“It depends on the ratings,” said Scott Snyder, a Korea fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked if he expects Trump to meet again with his North Korean counterpart.
The summit drew thousands of journalists and diplomatic officials to Singapore this week to see if Trump, a brash negotiator with limited understanding of nuclear policy or diplomatic protocols, could ink a preliminary deal to dismantle Pyongyang’s weapons program and reintegrate the hermit kingdom with the international community.
It was only after Trump canceled his meeting with Kim, then agreed to revive the bilateral meet-and-greet following an Oval Office visit from North Korea’s vice chairman, that Tuesday’s summit came about. And much like the complex process that brought a sitting U.S. president together with his North Korean counterpart for the first time in history, efforts to develop a framework for denuclearization out of the summit are likely to be laborious.
“The deal broadly speaking seems to be denuclearization for regime security guarantees that might take different forms, but there still needs to be an institutional framework that’s pushed forward to achieve those objectives and requires bureaucrats on both sides to interact with each other,” Snyder said.
Logistically speaking, a successful summit would likely lead both countries to assemble a team of bureaucrats — State Department aides, senior administration officials and White House advisors in the U.S. case — who would reconvene in the coming months to institute a process toward denuclearization and then oversee its execution. “For this kind of summit meeting, connecting the vertical channels becomes very important because these two individuals also have to bring their key players along and ensure they interact constructively,” Snyder explained.
It would be during those meetings, between high-ranking North Korean officials, individuals like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and representatives from other countries in the region (namely China, Japan and South Korea) that the terms of a nuclear deal would be fleshed out.
“The process should be concluded by the end of President Trump’s first term so the North Koreans know that even if there’s a change of administration, the deal will go forward,” said Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the conservative Center for the National Interest.
Like Pompeo and other allies of the administration, Kazianis believes the U.S. should utilize an incremental approach in its bid to denuclearize the Korean peninsula — a deal that would require Kim to make a “nuclear down payment” before he could win concessions from the international community.
“We could ask him to surrender one or two weapons to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and then the U.S. along with the United Nations would roll back sanctions a little bit,” Kazianis said. “Then maybe two weeks later, the North Koreans give up one or two ICBMs, and we take off similar sanctions. And we just go round and round and round like that until we can verify there are none left.”
“It’s a good way to do it because if [North Korea] cheats, we can say, ‘OK, you violated the terms. Maximum pressure is back on,’” he added.
Trump told reporters earlier this month “we can go fast [or] we can go slowly,” when it comes to negotiations with North Korea. The remark surprised analysts like Kazianis, who urged the president to avoid “cajoling” Pyongyang into an agreement that allows Kim to benefit from economic or humanitarian aid without actually surrendering his nuclear weapons.
“If Trump goes to Singapore and can’t get a joint statement that could be put forward after the summit about complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (CDIV), it would be a disaster. It would be worse than the Iran deal,” Kazianis said, referencing the 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump withdrew the U.S. from last month.
Meanwhile, North Korean officials have reacted defensively to the administration’s insistence that Kim agree to disarm before receiving sanctions relief or other goodwill gestures. “They have to denuclearize. We need a commitment,” a senior State Department aide told reporters recently. A West Wing meeting between Vice President Pence and former Sens. Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn last week suggested the administration has not backed away from that position, but is instead looking for ways to incentivize disarmament.
Lugar and Nunn co-authored historic legislation amid the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s to ensure the destruction and disposal of weapons of mass destruction in former soviet states. Their bill, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, provided funding for “productive [and] peaceful work for scientists who had worked in the weapons complex” and enabled the U.S. and Russia to work together for more than two decades to prevent proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
“In the context of a stable Korean peninsula, we can look broadly to CTR as a model,” the Republican and Democratic duo wrote in an op-ed ahead of Trump’s summit with Kim, arguing that “a broad-based plan for cooperative activities in North Korea would provide incentives for the Kim regime to comply with the difficult commitments and strict verification and monitoring that will necessarily be part of a serious denuclearization agreement.”
Sources close to Trump expect his secretary of state to do most of the legwork in the coming months as the U.S. makes a protracted effort to keep North Korea at the table and working toward denuclearization. Pompeo was the first administration official to meet with Kim during a secret trip to Pyongyang over Easter, and later returned to North Korea to secure the release of American hostages. His rapport with the country’s leadership was on full display last week when he met with Kim’s right-hand man, Kim Yong Chol, in New York and then organized a meeting between the high-ranking official and Trump.
“A lot of their propaganda in North Korea and the stuff they’ve put on state TV has featured clips of Pompeo, including one of Kim Jong Un walking him to his car and waving goodbye after their first meeting,” said a source briefed on images that have been spread around the isolated country.
Pompeo was also a big backer of Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, placing him under pressure to secure a superior deal with North Korea, as tough as some analysts predict that will be.
“The JCPOA was, in essence, an arms control agreement in which both sides reserved the right to dislike each other intensely. In that sense, the fact that the North Koreans have stated that they want to change their relationship with the U.S. and South Korea itself constitutes a difference” between the two regimes, Snyder said.
He added: “The best way to continue arguing that the JCPOA is bad, is to make a better deal with North Korea. The bad news is North Korea naturally wants to put down the gun slowly as opposed to any sudden movements or capitulation. They’re not interested in unconditional surrender.”
