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Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un is a greater concession than he likely understands—and a bigger risk. But why should the presence of two humans in a room have such high stakes?
The reason a US president has never met a North Korean leader is that the US and North Korea have been, and continue to be, at war. Since 1953, a ceasefire has made that conflict largely symbolic, with suffering limited to South Koreans killed in provocative strikes, and the North Koreans who suffer in a gulag state or die fleeing it.
In international diplomacy, the leader-to-leader meeting is the highest level of commitment available. No prior White House would send the president into a summit that has not been pre-scripted with guaranteed results. Should there be no agreement, there is no face-saving blame to be put on negotiators, and little room left for diplomacy. And while the White House says this meeting is not a negotiation, that only raises the question of what the president is even doing there.
To entice Trump, North Korea said it would suspend the nuclear and missile tests it uses to protest military exercises between the US and South Korea. For his part, Trump is likely to demand an end to the North’s nuclear program. Kim won’t surrender it without concessions, such as reductions in sanctions and an increase in aid. Ironically, this is the framework of the nuclear agreement with Iran that Trump has lambasted.
That Trump would contemplate offering compromises after years of criticizing them suggests that he has not contemplated much at all, a suspicion that accounts of his decision confirm (paywall). Meanwhile, South Korea’s dovish president, Moon Jae-in, is the prime mover behind the Trump-Kim connection. Putting his two spoiled, self-obsessed counterparts together is an extraordinary wager, motivated by impatience at decades of failure. The question is whether Trump will sit still long enough to learn what the US can offer in such talks, and what it shouldn’t.
True, it took Richard Nixon to go to China. But he only went after the groundwork had been laid.—Tim Fernholz
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Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, crypto scams, and LinkedIn requests to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Kira Bindrim and Kabir Chibber.