In for a shock? How much can Trump-Kim meeting deliver?

‘The sanctions are on in full. As you know, I haven’t taken sanctions off. I’d love to be able to, but in order to do that, we have to do something that’s meaningful on the other side (sic).’ So said President Donald Trump on 20 February about his upcoming meeting with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, which is scheduled to take place in Vietnam before the end of February.

Trump said: ‘Chairman Kim and I have a very good relationship. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something work out,’ adding, ‘We have subjects to discuss which will be very fruitful, I believe.’

Writing in the forthcoming issue of WorldECR, North Korea expert Shea Cotton, of the James Martin Center for Proliferation Studies at Monterey, says that there are indications that the US side has high expectations for the talks, noting that Special Representative Steve Beigun had said he had been told that North Korea would dismantle all plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities, and a comprehensive declaration on all North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction.

Cotton writes: ‘If Beigun’s views are widely held within the administration, then all are in for a shock. North Korea has never stated at any point within these negotiations that it is willing to give up its nuclear weapons. Nor is the regime likely to provide a full declaration of its WMD and missile facilities, much less its nuclear facilities. To the contrary, Kim Jong Un stated at the start of 2018 that North Korea would begin mass producing nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them and several reports suggest North Korea is doing exactly that.’

He says that while the prospect of a genuinely productive summit ‘are dim’, the parties may settle for symbolic gestures – such as the lifting of some sanctions or a peace declaration stating that the Korean war is officially over, while ‘North Korea may be willing to dismantle its reactor at Yongbyon.’

He notes: ‘For North Korea, these symbolic steps still bring them closer to a key goal: normalising relations with the United States and legitimising its possession of nuclear weapons.’