Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Trump administration has almost no chance of getting North Korea’s complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization. But peace and security on the Korean peninsula is possible if Trump is willing to adjust to the reality that America will have to live with a nuclear North Korea.
For the visit to be a success, Pompeo should leave Pyongyang with specific details on the North Korean nuclear inventory, concrete next steps and a timeline which shows Kim is earnest in denuclearizing, and an agreement on how verification of any of the aforementioned objectives will happen.
In 2018, political relations on the Korean peninsula are in flux to an unprecedented degree.
The deal between U.S. President Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is weak and far too general. The diverging interpretations of how to develop the agreement bode poorly for the future.
Despite the pageantry of the Singapore summit, the outcomes remain uncertain.
It’s not impossible that the Singapore summit will spark a process that succeeds. But the president’s all-or-nothing approach to denuclearizing North Korea is a misrepresentation to the summit’s outcome.
A summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have been the only way to change the diplomatic dynamic between North Korea and the U.S. Whether this high risk approach will work remains to be seen.
The hopes for peace and disarmament are understandable, but how quickly will those commitments begin? So far the results are non-existent.
President Trump went to the meeting with Kim Jong-un to try and take the keys to his nuclear kingdom. But Kim Jong-Un is not surrendering North Korea's nuclear weapons and has walked away the winner.
Though the joint statement from the Trump-Kim summit remains vague, the meeting could be an effective confidence-building measure in steps toward implementing a denuclearization agreement.
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