The art of no deal: how Trump and Kim misread each other

As with many disastrous second dates, the collapse of Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un was made inevitable by the misreading of each other’s intentions at their first encounter.

Since their initial meeting in Singapore last June, the US president had become fixated on what he saw as a close personal bond with the North Korean dictator half his age. He told his supporters: “We fell in love ... He wrote me beautiful letters.”

Those hand-delivered missives appear to have flattered Trump without offering concrete proposals of what Kim was going to do as part of a bargain. A joint statement issued in Singapore stated North Korea’s commitment to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”, which Trump appears to have understood as a pledge of complete unilateral nuclear disarmament.

In North Korea, however, the phrase is a routine regime slogan that refers to a gradual defusing of tensions on the peninsula and phased multilateral disarmament, during which North Korea would be treated as a nuclear power.

For his part, Kim appears to have come away from Singapore interpreting Trump’s gushing behaviour as sign of a desperation to strike a deal, which would potentially leave most of his arsenal in place while normalising relations with the US and lifting sanctions.

These wildly different perceptions collided painfully in Hanoi, where the two leaders discovered each other not to be the ideal partner they had previously imagined.

“It was obvious from the beginning that they would get stuck on the questions of how much denuclearisation there should be and how much sanctions relief,” said Joseph Yun, former US special representative for North Korea policy now at the US Institute of Peace thinktank. “Both Kim and Trump are now in a very difficult position. I think Trump now has to realise that complete denuclearisation, however charming Kim may be, is not on the cards.”

Yun said that Trump’s room for manoeuvre was constrained by the timing of the summit, coinciding with a furious denunciation by his former lawyer in congressional hearings. The president’s embattled position in Washington meant he had to deliver something spectacular in Hanoi or nothing at all.

Play Video 1:31 Trump on Kim Jong-un talks: 'Sometimes you have to walk' – video

“Probably a smaller deal was possible,” Yun said. “But in my view Trump had to have a big deal, with Cohen going on in Washington. If he brought home a small deal he knew he would be heavily criticised.”

Many experts who have been severely critical of Trump’s diplomacy said they thought he had done the right thing by refusing to accept the deal apparently presented in Hanoi by Kim: sanctions relief in return for undertakings to shut down North Korea’s oldest and biggest nuclear weapons complex at Yongbyon.

The two sides dispute the extent of sanctions relief: the US has said Kim wanted complete relief, North Korea has said it was asking for partial relief.

“You can all argue whether this should have been done at a summit at all,” said Joel Wit, a former state department official with long experience of negotiating with North Korea and now a senior fellow at the Stimson Center thinktank. “I wouldn’t have done that deal either. I think it was the right thing to do not to sign.”

Vipin Narang, an expert on nuclear proliferation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it was “better that Kim Jong-un didn’t commit to shutting down Yongbyon if he was going to slow-roll it, because committing to it in writing and then leaving himself vulnerable to being accused of violating it sets us on a collision course”.

For the time being, Trump has shown no sign of a backlash against Kim in the face of Thursday’s bitter disappointment. He made clear he still believed in the North Korean despot’s good faith, even in the matter of the brutal and fatal torture of the US student Otto Warmbier in a North Korean prison.

Play Video 1:31 Otto Warmbier: Trump says he believes Kim Jong-un was unaware of torture - video

Some had feared that when it became clear Kim had no intention of giving up his nuclear arsenal Trump would resort to the threats and insults which helped bring the two countries to the brink of war in the summer and autumn of 2017.

For all the claims of his ghost-written book The Art of the Deal, Trump revealed himself to be a profoundly flawed negotiator who failed to understand his counterpart, and convinced himself only he could clinch an agreement, nuclear experts said.

Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapses after negotiations fail Read more

Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, who had taken part in preparatory talks with North Korean officials, was sidelined at the summit, his place at the table taken by the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who has minimal foreign policy experience.

Biegun’s marginalisation was “incredibly striking”, said Alexandra Bell, a former state department arms control official.

“The president has repeatedly signalled through word and deed that he doesn’t really trust Biegun to lead this process,” said Bell, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. She recalled Trump’s lack of concern about extensive vacancies at the state department when he said: “I’m the only one who matters.”

“That may be the case to the president, but it means no one can work ably on his behalf,” she added. “Based on his remarks at the press conference, he seemed to intimate that he thought we could secure a grand bargain and declare victory. That’s not how any of this works.”