U.S. President Donald Trump has been touting his “great relationship” with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un since he returned to office, most recently in his summit with South Korea’s new leader. It’s only a matter of time before Trump gets serious about setting up a new summit with Kim – especially now that the North Korean leader has signaled his openness to the idea.
Whether Trump would accept Kim’s stated terms – the United States must first drop “its hollow obsession with denuclearization” and “pursue peaceful coexistence with North Korea based on the recognition of reality” – is unclear. Whether another excursion into summitry between Trump and Kim will do more good than harm is also an open question.
When he took office in 2017, Donald Trump was the right man at the right time to stop the growing danger from North Korea. Inexperienced, narcissistic, and impulsive, Trump was ready to do something no other sitting president had been willing to do: meet with a North Korean dictator.
During the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Pyongyang’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction had reached alarming proportions, growing from a handful of short-range missiles and nuclear weapons able to strike South Korea and Japan to an arsenal that could threaten American cities. When he left office, Obama as much as acknowledged that he had failed to stop Pyongyang. The outgoing president warned Trump that North Korea would become the greatest threat the United States he would face during his time in office.
Afterwards, a shaken Trump repeatedly brought North Korea up in his first meetings with foreign leaders, including the British prime minister, who had other topics on their minds. He asked his aides how his predecessors could have allowed a country with whom the United States had fought a war to become so dangerous.
Trump’s summitry was the right idea – only Kim could agree to give up his country’s nuclear weapons – but he still mismanaged his three meetings with the North Korean leader. Because Trump rushed ahead with their first encounter in Singapore, the U.S. fell far short of securing a detailed summit declaration.
The president came closer to achieving that goal at the February 2019 Hanoi summit, but it abruptly ended when he walked out. The Kim-Trump encounter a few months later, a snap meeting at the DMZ , soured their relationship when the president didn’t follow through on a pledge to end an upcoming South Korean-U.S. military exercise.
If another summit happens, it’s easy to imagine another encounter dominated by the president’s public relations missteps. Just as he did at the first three summits, Trump will repeat a steady drumbeat of effusive praise for the North Korean dictator, even though Kim has provided Russia with weapons and troops to use in Ukraine. In the market for a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump will probably exaggerate what he accomplished just as he did after the Singapore meeting, when he falsely proclaimed that there was “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”
However, leaving public relations aside, a fourth Kim-Trump summit could head off a dangerous arms race and mounting tensions in Northeast Asia. Even limited agreements starting the ball rolling toward confidence building as well as gradual restraints on activities deemed threatening by both sides would lessen tensions.
But for that to happen, Trump will have to understand that the Kim he will be meeting in 2025 is very different from the young North Korean leader he met in 2019. Six years ago, Kim was serious about building better relations with the United States and gradually giving up his nuclear weapons. Like his grandfather and father, the young leader wanted to counterbalance a bigger power on his border, China, and to modernize his economy with outside assistance.
Today, however Kim’s motivation to meet Trump is very different and goes way beyond his “good memories” of the president. Now a close friend of the United States’ rivals, especially Russia but also China, Kim is seeking to establish himself as a major player on the world stage. Undoubtedly, he would like to cool tensions with the United States. However, like his friends, Kim is interested in strengthening his own position in Northeast Asia by weakening U.S. ties to its nearby allies in Seoul and Tokyo.
Trump could easily fall into his trap. Kim knows from first-hand experience that the U.S. president is skeptical about alliances, especially ties with South Korea. That skepticism, combined with Trump’s freelancing, during his past sessions with Kim as well as his most recent Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, could provide the North Korean leader with an opening.
All of this doesn’t mean a fourth summit is doomed to fail. However, rushing into another encounter like Trump did with the 2019 DMZ meeting would be a mistake. During his first term, Stephen Biegun, the State Department envoy, played a key role in formulating pragmatic proposals for Kim. However, unlike the team that formulated Trump’s recent Middle East peace plan, there are no longer experienced hands at the Korea policy till who could set up a successful summit.
Two important issues will require special care. Washington may find a way to ease into a summit by parrying Kim’s insistence that he will not discuss denuclearization. That’s fine for now, since the prospect is bleak given the growth of Pyongyang’s arsenal. A more pressing priority at the summit and in any negotiations will be a near-term agreement, including limited constraints on the North’s nuclear and missile programs, as well as other confidence building measures, that reduce the danger of regional conflict that can escalate into a nuclear war.
Second, the United States will need to checkmate any attempt by Kim to undermine Washington’s key alliances in Asia. The North Korean leader will certainly resurrect his demand made during past summits that the United States end military exercises with South Korea. He may go further and ask Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula in the name of peaceful coexistence.
Deflecting those demands will not be easy. Trump has come close in the past to not only postponing pursuit of denuclearization but officially accepting North Korea as a “nuclear power” and “a big nuclear nation.” He needs to avoid even the whiff of acceptance either during the summit or afterwards. Kim would heartily welcome such a statement but Washington’s allies, already doubting whether the United States would protect them against a nuclear-armed adversary, would not.
Trump may have a kneejerk negative reaction to alliances and their financial costs. And he is almost certain to agree to suspending or even ending South Korean-U.S. exercises as he did during his first term. But, despite Trump’s skepticism, he should reject any request from Kim to reduce or withdraw U.S. troops on the peninsula.
The Pentagon reportedly is now studying withdrawing 4,500 out of the 28,000 troops deployed on the peninsula to other bases in the region to focus on the threat posed by China. However, any final decision should be worked out with Washington’s ally, not Kim Jong Un.
A fourth Kim-Trump summit could help bring peace and stability to Northeast Asia. However, success or failure will largely depend on a president more interested in stagecraft than statecraft. While Trump has claimed that he knows Kim “better than anybody,” except the dictator’s sister, he would do well to understand that times have changed since he last shook hands with North Korea’s leader.