Analysis: U.S.-North Korea Summit decoded

No question that the US-North Korea summit was historic. No question that any signs that can be seen to date are positive about where the process will go.

But if there was hope that the summit would clarify crucial details about how completely denuclearization would remove the North’s nuclear infrastructure, about verification and about timing – those details were not clarified.

In typical obscure fashion, US President Donald Trump at a Tuesday news conference said that North Korean denuclearization would “start very soon” and occur “as fast as mechanically and physically” possible, but also said “it does take a long time to pull off complete denuclearization.”

The closest to concrete Trump got was sharing a detail not in the agreement he and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed – that Pyongyang will soon destroy a missile engine testing site.

While destroying that site is significant, the North has made more significant concessions in dismantling aspects of its nuclear program in advance, only to reverse the concessions later.

So timing for denuclearization is unclear.

What about the timing of removing sanctions?

Here, Trump made a potentially significant statement, though it may have been off-the-cuff and may not represent final policy.

The US president said that sanctions will be removed from Pyongyang once its nuclear weapons are no longer a factor.

If read literally, this would mean that Trump would be ready to start lifting sanctions before North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure has been dismantled and that the focus would be on either removing its nuclear weapons or somehow altering their status such that they will not be a threat.  

This does not mean that Trump might not demand a full dismantling of Kim’s nuclear infrastructure, but it does make the potential future North Korean deal sound more similar to the Iran deal in terms of offering sanctions relief before irreversible dismantling occurs.

On a side note, Trump could argue that his deal or process with the North is superior to the Iran deal in that Kim has already halted all missile testing for over seven months and has committed to do so indefinitely – something which Iran has stridently resisted.

Trump was most evasive regarding verification. He seemed to credit the North with eliminating its nuclear testing site before the summit, though that was verified only by selected members of the media from a distance and not by a nuclear professional up close. He said he had “the feel” that Pyongyang really wanted a deal and would not cheat this time.

But if some critics have asked for a full North Korean declaration of its nuclear program within 30-90 days – where negotiations broke down in the past – there was no hint of that on Tuesday other than that both sides committed to working on moving things forward as quickly as possible.   

Trump did reveal some interesting details and possibilities on how far the US is willing to go to get a deal.

He said that the US had now halted any future war games with South Korea – something he had refused to do before the summit. Trump even went so far as to call the war games “provocative,” seeming to take on Kim’s narrative on that issue.

Regarding withdrawing US troops or nuclear capabilities from South Korea – a long North Korean demand that past US administrations have brushed off – the US president first said “we are not reducing anything.” However, then he said, he “wants to bring our soldiers back home” though not yet.

Both these statements, and statements by US Secretaries of State and Defense Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis, indicated that the US is finally open to some kind of redeployment of its troops and capabilities over time as part of a broader deal than has not previously been considered.

Previous administrations merely offered economic benefits for denuclearization, or certainly did not publicly flirt with any kind of withdrawals at any earlier stages as Trump did on Tuesday. 

Last, Trump briefly veered into a comparison with the Iran nuclear deal. While he made some tough statements signalling that he believes he has Iran on the run and is succeeding in reducing its adventurism in the Middle East and especially Syria, he also said that he hoped Iran would watch the North Korean negotiations to see they should sign a new and “real deal.” 

With the lack of detail shared so far, other than a halt to missile testing, it is unclear exactly what he would expect Iran to glean.

Trump succeeded in jump-starting a potentially serious negotiation with North Korea on Tuesday. It may even turn into a process which could positively pressure Iran into a better nuclear deal, especially if the US is ready for a bigger deal, including redeploying aspects of its forces on the Korean Peninsula.

But determining whether this process is truly different from past failed processes will depend on the US defining full denuclearization more specifically, timing for that and for sanctions relief, defining verification and getting Kim to sign on to more than just promises.