In Vietnam, President Trump made the right call and said no to a bad deal with North Korea. But the summit shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Trump, blinded by his belief in the power of his personality, failed to see that and set himself up to come home with no deal.
During a stunning press conference in Hanoi, Trump explained that at the end of two days of negotiations North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un still wasn’t prepared to give up his nuclear weapons.
As Trump told reporters, “Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that,” Adding, “They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we want, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that.”
But that impasse is unsurprising. Working-level talks with North Korea had broken down months before over similar disagreements and North Korea failed to take any concrete steps towards denuclearization, instead working to conceal existing weapons.
The Trump administration knew that and went ahead with a second summit anyways with Trump, perhaps believing that bluster and praise for his “friend” Kim would smooth over lingering disagreements. On Thursday, however, Trump seemed to finally recognize that when it came to working out a deal with North Korea, that wasn’t going to be enough and that details, not just a great friendship, mattered.
As he put it, “We actually had papers ready to be signed, but it just wasn’t appropriate. I’d much rather do it right than do it fast.”
Hopefully, that hard lesson doesn’t mean an end to talks. Trump conveyed as much during the press conference, saying that although a deal collapsed, “This wasn’t a walkaway like you get up and walk out. No, this was very friendly. We shook hands. You know, there is a warmth that we have and I hope that stays. I think it will.”
That’s not a bad place to be on the difficult road to negotiating denuclearization, but Trump must not make the same misguided bets on the power of personality over the hard and fast reality of disagreement again. A disappointing summit and botched talks do little to yield real progress.
