It will be one of those reality-TV spectacles upon which Donald Trump built his political fame: a head-to-head meeting, with the world watching, possibly in a Russian city, with Kim Jong-un, the equally drama-obsessed dictator of North Korea.

And like those reality shows, the real accomplishments have been behind the cameras. It was not Mr. Trump who brokered the nuclear-arms talks with his North Korean nemesis, but rather the government of South Korea, after weeks of careful diplomacy and little or no help from Mr. Trump’s understaffed State Department. And the real talks, should they happen, were the culmination of long negotiations involving China and Russia as well as South Korea, reportedly often working through the International Olympic Committee.

Some diplomats say they see the head-to-head meeting, scheduled to happen by May, as a bold Hail Mary pass that could theoretically shatter decades of deadlock around the North Korean threat – or create a situation where failure is total and violent. It was not Donald Trump who threw that pass, though – it was the Koreas. Donald Trump’s role is one of reaction rather than action – and that could prove his failing.

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Unlike an episode of The Apprentice, the Trump-Kim talks will not be a simple yes-or-no transaction, and Mr. Trump will not be bargaining from a position of strength. He does have the potential to destroy North Korea (albeit in an act that would also destroy much of South Korea), and the tougher sanctions on Pyongyang appear to be having some effect.

But it is Mr. Kim who, by proposing talks and offering compromises, has the upper hand – it will now be left to Mr. Trump to offer up some equally awkward U.S. compromise in exchange, or walk away from a meeting that is now the only hope for peace. Either response involves a loss of face for the U.S. in order to achieve a greater goal – something Mr. Trump has not shown any willingness to accept in other negotiations.

“In years of dealing with North Korea, I have learned that the regime never gives anything away for free,” Victor Cha wrote on Friday morning in The New York Times. He was the Trump administration’s appointee for ambassador to South Korea until he rejected the appointment in December after criticizing Mr. Trump’s threats to launch first-strike military attacks. “The unanswered question going forward is what the United States is willing to put on the table for a negotiation.”

Without a bold and concrete plan to offer concessions (which could include opening of economic ties, removal of U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula or even an agreement to negotiate an end to the Korean War) in exchange for a drawdown of North Korea’s ballistic-missile capacity or an end to its nuclear program, Mr. Cha warned, the Trump-Kim meetings could actually create a more dangerous situation on the peninsula.

“Everyone should be aware that this dramatic act of diplomacy by these two unusual leaders, who love flair and drama, may also take us closer to war,” Mr. Cha noted. “Failed negotiations at the summit level leave all parties with no other recourse for diplomacy.”

The only material benefit certain to arise from talks between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim is that a war between the countries or an attack on South Korea will not take place while the talks are occurring. That, South Koreans know, was reason enough to broker the talks and, once under way, to keep them alive as long as possible.

Indeed, Pyongyang agreed to a freeze on nuclear tests during its current talks with South Korea, launched last week under the diplomatic thaw of the Winter Olympics.

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The talks, aside from the novelty of the two leaders sitting face-to-face, are far from unprecedented: Both countries spent years at the negotiating table, along with South Korea, China and Japan, in talks that lasted from 2003 to 2009, during which time North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon. Those talks involved extremely complex negotiations involving scores of officials from the U.S. State Department and years of careful preparation and planning. Mr. Trump now has less than eight weeks to prepare a position, after having failed to appoint officials to the State Department’s Asia desk or even an ambassador to South Korea

“In accepting the invitation outright, Trump has already lost much of his leverage over the terms and agenda of the talks,” Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, told The Washington Post. A more effective approach, he said, “is to start by offering a credible plan to stabilize the peninsula and halt nuclear and missile tests sustainably, and then build out to a more ambitious agreement.”

But it is not at all clear that Mr. Trump had any such outcome in mind when he announced talks on Thursday night. Kim Jong-un, he boasted in a tweet, had “talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze,” and the United States would accept nothing other than full denuclearization before removing sanctions. That is a sensible stance to take while North Korea is increasing its nuclear arsenal; it is not a very useful starting point for peace talks.

As described by Mr. Trump, the talks will be an all-or-nothing transaction, much like those he savoured on The Apprentice. Unlike that TV show, however, both the “all” and the “nothing” in these talks will involve stakes that could jeopardize the safety of the world.