His advisers will deny it, but when Donald Trump stepped into<\/a> North Korea on Sunday, he effectively stepped away from his administration\u2019s stated goal of fully eliminating Kim Jong Un\u2019s nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n There were many remarkable aspects of the U.S. president\u2019s surprise meeting with the North Korean leader at the border, but perhaps the most notable was the absence of the issue that brought Trump and Kim together in the first place one year ago: Pyongyang\u2019s development of a nuclear-weapons arsenal that directly threatens the United States and its allies, and which Trump\u2019s advisers once vowed<\/a> to remove by 2021.<\/p>\n From the moment Trump greeted<\/a> Kim with an extended hand (\u201cMy friend! \u2026 It\u2019s my honor.\u201d), to their first comments<\/a> to reporters, to their remarks<\/a> to the media while meeting one-on-one, the president never publicly mentioned North Korea\u2019s nuclear program, and Kim didn\u2019t bring it up either. Trump raised<\/a> the subject twice during an earlier news conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, but in both cases it was to briefly note that Kim hasn\u2019t tested nuclear weapons while engaged in talks with the United States. (It fell to Moon to note that he and Trump still agreed on the ultimate objective of denuclearization.)<\/p>\n Read: The normalization of meeting Kim Jong Un<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n As Adam Mount of the Federation of American Scientists pointed out<\/a>, Trump repeatedly described the personal connection he has established with North Korea\u2019s dictator not as a means to denuclearization, but as an end in itself. \u201cThe relationship that we\u2019ve developed has meant so much to so many people,\u201d Trump says in a highlight reel<\/a> from his trip to the demilitarized zone that contains no reference to Kim\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n The president\u2019s allies have amplified the message. \u201cThis president is taking action\u2014and we\u2019re closer to peace than ever before!\u201d Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, wrote<\/a> on Twitter, posting footage of Trump setting foot in North Korean territory. If North Korea\u2019s denuclearization is any closer, she didn\u2019t say. (North Korea hasn\u2019t taken any steps toward reducing its nuclear-weapons stockpile.)<\/p>\n Theatrics aside, the third Trump-Kim meeting was the product of deflated ambition. Trump and Kim initially agreed on something general, then disagreed on the specifics, and now were essentially agreeing to disagree. While the first summit, in Singapore, yielded a vague North Korean commitment in writing<\/a> to \u201cwork toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,\u201d and the second summit, in Vietnam, ended<\/a> with no agreement when U.S. demands for denuclearization and North Korean demands for sanctions relief couldn\u2019t be reconciled, the third appears to have featured little substantive discussion altogether.<\/p>\n After Vietnam, some Trump-administration officials had suggested<\/a> that another meeting with Kim was contingent on North Korea showing it was prepared to make real progress on denuclearization. It didn\u2019t, as far as we know, and yet the president went ahead with a meeting anyway.<\/p>\n The most significant result from the DMZ rendezvous was Trump and Kim blessing negotiations between lower-level officials, which more or less returns the process to where it was six months ago, before the Vietnam summit.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018The United States has accepted North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.\u2019 This is the headline,\u201d the nuclear expert David Santoro noted<\/a> in reference to the image of Trump and Kim standing beside each other at the inter-Korean border. \u201cLook at the picture\u2014really look at it\u2014and tell me I\u2019m wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Read: Trump sides with North Korea against the CIA<\/a><\/p>\n Santoro\u2019s point wasn\u2019t that the United States is all of a sudden cool with North Korea possessing nuclear weapons, but rather that it is acknowledging the reality that Kim is highly unlikely to surrender them\u2014and therefore settling for ways to reduce the threat they pose.<\/p>\n The Trump administration probably won\u2019t ever publicly retreat from its policy of \u201cfinal, fully verifiable denuclearization<\/a>,\u201d and so far it hasn\u2019t shown much flexibility in easing sanctions until North Korea signs up for that. But in emphasizing<\/a> that sanctions remain in place as he pursues a \u201ccomprehensive\u201d deal and that he\u2019s in no rush, the president seems to be betting on, at worst, a drawn-out process in which Kim refrains from additional nuclear and missile tests, and at best, the North Korean leader making major nuclear concessions as sanctions take their toll.<\/p>\n Yesterday, National Security Adviser John Bolton denied<\/a> a New York Times\u00a0<\/em>report<\/a> that the Trump administration is now aiming to verifiably freeze North Korea\u2019s production of nuclear-weapons material, and thus prevent Kim\u2019s arsenal from becoming more dangerous than it already is. (Bolton specifically said the National Security Council is not working on such a plan, leaving open the possibility that the effort could be under way elsewhere in the government.)<\/p>\n Still, as the North Korea scholar Van Jackson has noted<\/a>, that\u2019s exactly the sort of outcome you would strive for if you\u2019re tacitly recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power\u2014along with additional steps such as getting Kim to cap or even roll back aspects of his nuclear program, or pledge to not build new kinds of weapons.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n When we met in Seoul last spring, Cheon Seong-whun, a former South Korean national-security official, told me this day would come. He advised against thinking of the dramatic diplomacy of the past year as laying the foundation for North Korea\u2019s eventual denuclearization. Instead, he argued, we are witnessing last-ditch efforts\u2014desperate experiments with anything and everything imaginable\u2014to stave off the emergence of North Korea as a fully fledged nuclear-weapons state. The present period reminded him of the late 1940s, when the U.S. government formulated its policy to contain and deter Russia once it acquired the bomb.<\/p>\n U.S. officials came around to the idea that they had \u201cno choice but to accept the Soviet Union as a new nuclear-weapons power and manage their relationship,\u201d he said. When it dawns on either Trump or the next American president that neither engagement nor pressure will persuade Kim to relinquish his nukes, Cheon predicted, the U.S. government will reach a similar conclusion.<\/p>\nMORE STORIES<\/h2>\n
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<\/picture><\/a><\/figure>\nThe Normalization of Meeting Kim Jong Un<\/a><\/h3>\nURI FRIEDMAN<\/a><\/address>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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Trump and Kim\u2019s Interactions Aren\u2019t Transactional Anymore<\/a><\/h3>\nDUYEON KIM<\/a><\/address>\n
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<\/picture><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\nTrump Sides With North Korea Against the CIA<\/a><\/h3>\nDAVID A. GRAHAM<\/a><\/address>\n<\/div>\n