The Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi: What Do Experts in China Think?

March 5, 2019 Topic: Security Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: ChinaMilitaryTechnologyWorldNorth Korea

The Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi: What Do Experts in China Think?

One Chinese foreign-policy expert expressed optimism the United States and North Korea can reach a deal over Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal. Non-Chinese experts were less sanguine.

One Chinese foreign-policy expert expressed optimism the United States and North Korea can reach a deal over Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal. Non-Chinese experts were less sanguine.

U.S. president Donald Trump on Feb. 28, 2019 abruptly walked away from his meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un after just two days of discussion.

The summit in Hanoi came less than a year after Trump and Kim met in Singapore and pledged to work toward denuclearization and a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.

"Despite the setback during the Hanoi talks, mutual trust between the two developed recently has not been harmed," Cui Liru, a senior researcher at the Taihe Institute, wrote in Global Times, a government-run newspaper in China.

"This time, they both thought the other side was not going to the summit for nothing. Both had wanted to reach a deal and are now stuck on the issue of what to offer in exchange for what they want," Cui added.

Kim reportedly wanted Trump to lift all economic sanctions on North Korea in exchange for a partial rollback of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities. Trump balked. "Sometimes you have to walk," Trump told reporters in Hanoi.

But North Korea's delegation in its own press conference denied Trump's claim, insisting it asked for only a partial lifting of sanctions.

"I think North Korea is, as Pyongyang is well aware that it's impossible to completely scrap the sanctions at one go," Cui wrote. "So it found another way -- partially abandoning its nuclear weapons in exchange for a truncated sanctions relief, which is reasonable."

After the first Kim-Trump summit in June 2018, North Korea and the U.S. held extensive talks in order to find ways to bridge differences and implement the Singapore Declaration. They must have found the possibilities. Otherwise, the Hanoi summit wouldn't have taken place.

Judging from Kim's approach and the news release from Pyongyang, North Korea must have expected that Trump would agree to a deal, which the two sides were believed to have negotiated and given their purported nods to.

However, Trump lived up to his style of throwing up surprises and took North Korea aback. The U.S. is asking North Korea to dismantle more nuclear complexes before considering easing the sanctions, a demand Pyongyang cannot accept.

This is Trump's art of the deal -- raising Kim's expectations and then piling more pressure, so as to make the latter give in to U.S. demands. Pyongyang mustn't have realized that Washington would jack up the price for an agreement.

Trump wanted an agreement, but changed his mind before his departure to Hanoi by mentioning on several occasions that he was in no rush to reach a deal.

On his way out the proverbial door in Hanoi, Trump once again voiced his disapproval of major military exercises between the United States and South Korea. "Well, you know, the military exercises, I gave that up quite a while ago because it costs us $100 million every time we do it," Trump said. On Saturday, the U.S. and South Korea made a formal announcement ending the exercises for good, in favor of smaller-scale drills that are not as high-profile. 

Non-Chinese experts questioned the wisdom of Trump's approach and, in particular, his giveaway of joint U.S.-South Korean war games. "The net result is that South Korea will be less able to respond effectively to North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal," wrote Chung Min Lee, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"In the meantime, China’s leverage over North Korea—and, for that matter, over South Korea—will continue to grow, because Beijing, Pyongyang and Seoul all want U.S. forces to start pulling out of South Korea and, over time, withdraw entirely," Chung wrote.

"The inability to get even the most minor concessions out of Kim Jong Un, after all of the time and resources that went into the second summit—as well as the goodwill of our Vietnam hosts—really puts time on Kim’s side," wrote Jung H. Pak. a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

"It empowers him to seek more summits, as he did right after the 2018 Singapore summit, and to try to cement a status for North Korea as a responsible nuclear weapons power," Jun added.

But Chinese expert Cui was less gloomy. "Talks will continue," Cui wrote. "The Hanoi summit helped [Trump and Kim] get to know each other better, which could help them become more practical in future negotiations. Hence, the second Kim-Trump summit is still meaningful."

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War FixWar Is Boring and Machete Squad.

Image: Reuters.