We must be clear-eyed, however, about the path ahead and remain grounded in reality. A lot could happen to derail the currently positive trends.

Kim could ask for immediate sanctions relief as the price for simply continuing to talk, which Trump has emphatically said he would not do. Trump could demand that Kim agree to a complete, verifiable, and irreversible disarmament before agreeing to any relief, which Kim is not likely to accept.

The North Korean leader may ask a high price for giving up his nuclear weapons. He may, for example, seek not just an ultimate peace treaty, but try to demand the early withdraw of the U.S. nuclear umbrella from South Korea and removal of all U.S. troops from the peninsula as signs of the "goodwill" Kim said he wanted to see from the U.S. and South Korea.

If Trump enters negotiations with the explicit intent on denuclearizing North Korea in the near term, then the talks will collapse and the risk of war will return to late-2017 levels. This outcome is not in America's interests, however, and not necessary for U.S. security.

Many pundits argue that Kim has no intention of actually giving up his nuclear weapons. Kim fed this belief himself when he said in his 2018 New Year's speech that "our republic has at last come to possess a powerful and reliable war deterrent, which no force and nothing can reverse."