Expectations low as Trump looks for win in talks with Kim

FE Team | Published: February 25, 2019 23:01:19

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (AP): President Donald Trump will head into his second meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un having reframed what would make a successful summit, lowering expectations for Pyongyang's denuclearisation while eager to declare a flashy victory to offset the political turmoil he faces at home.
Trump was the driving force behind this week's Vietnam summit, aiming to re-create the global spectacle of his first meeting with Kim, although that initial summit yielded few concrete results and the months that followed have produced little optimism about what will be achieved in the sequel.
He once warned that North Korea's arsenal posed such a threat to humanity that he may have no choice but to rain "fire and fury" on the rogue nation, yet on Sunday declared that he was in no hurry for Pyongyang to prove it was abandoning its weapons.
"I'm not in a rush. I don't want to rush anybody, I just don't want testing. As long as there's no testing, we're happy," Trump told a gathering of governors at the White House. Hours earlier, he ended a tweet about the summit by posing the key question that looms over their meeting in Vietnam: "Denuclearization?"
He did not provide an answer.
Though worries abound across world capitals about what Trump might be willing to give up in the name of a win, the president was ready to write himself into the history books before he and Kim even shake hands in Hanoi.
"If I were not elected president, you would have been in a war with North Korea," Trump said last week. "We now have a situation where the relationships are good - where there has been no nuclear testing, no missiles, no rockets."
Whatever the North Koreans have done so far, the survival of the Kim regime is always the primary concern.
Kim inherited a nascent, incomplete nuclear program from his father, and after years of accelerated effort and fighting through crippling sanctions, he built an arsenal that demonstrates the potential capability to deliver a thermonuclear weapon to the mainland United States. That is the fundamental reason Washington now sits at the negotiating table.
Kim, his world standing elevated after receiving an audience with a US president, has yet to show a convincing sign that he is willing to deal away an arsenal that might provide a stronger guarantee of survival than whatever security assurance the United States could provide.
The North Koreans have largely eschewed staff-level talks, pushing for discussions between Trump and Kim.
Trump will arrive in Hanoi on Tuesday on Air Force One while his counterpart, lacking a modern aircraft fleet, travels via armored train. Though details of the summit remain closely held, the two leaders are expected to meet at some point one-on-one, joined only by translators.
The easing of tension between the two nations, Trump and his allies believe, stems from the US president's own unorthodox and unpredictable style of diplomacy.
Often prizing personal rapport over long-held strategic interests, Trump has pointed to his budding relationship with the young and reclusive leader, frequently showing visitors to the Oval Office his flattering letters from Kim.