The roller coaster that passes for the diplomatic negotiations between the United States and North Korea is moving again. President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, agreed to restart negotiations. Summitry with President Trump has a large similarity to quantum uncertainty. The meeting of the two in Singapore went well; their last meeting in Hanoi was a disaster. Mr Trump has kicked off this round, becoming the first serving US president to set foot on North Korean soil.
Mr Trump deserves some credit for his unorthodox diplomacy. The traditional process of protracted negotiations and involving four other countries had accomplished nothing for years. Mr Kim, on the other hand, was not prepared to accept the status quo. His provocations during the spring of last year — personally abusing Mr Trump, threatening to fire missiles at the US — led many in Northeast Asia to believe war was imminent. But the North Korean leader’s out-of-the-box ways seem to have converged with Mr Trump’s dislike for the established way of doing things and confidence in his own personal charm.
The Hanoi summit failed because Mr Trump demanded North Korea commit to denuclearisation before the US would lift sanctions. Mr Kim, unsurprisingly, rejected the offer. Presumably, the two sides will now move towards making calibrated sets of concessions, though the fundamental difference over what a “denuclearised” North Korea remains. This is not dissimilar to what conventional negotiations would have looked like. But this remains diplomacy from the top and both leaders should be careful to not let the process become hostage to their personal concerns. Mr Trump, for example, is impatient for a success because of his approaching re-election. The stakes are high. The Korean peninsula is a real nuclear flashpoint and its primary destabiliser, North Korea, is not prepared to let things lie. If the present talks fail, Mr Kim will return to firing missiles and detonating nuclear bombs. The two leaders have opened a door that wasn’t there before; they need to keep it ajar for enough time for a real road map to be drafted.