US President Donald Trump (right) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pause during their second summit, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019. The two leaders abruptly cut the two-day meeting short, and nuclear negotiations ultimately collapsed. [Getty Images]
US President Donald Trump (right) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pause during their second summit, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019. The two leaders abruptly cut the two-day meeting short, and nuclear negotiations ultimately collapsed. [Getty Images]

As concerns grow that Donald Trump's push to restart a US-North Korea summit is shaping up on terms favorable to Pyongyang, even the conservative, pro-Trump Fox News has offered a pessimistic outlook on the current diplomatic overture.

In an article published Sunday under the headline "Trump plays nuclear poker with Kim Jong-un — but who holds the cards?", Fox News reported that Trump "faces a North Korea with far less incentive to cut a deal" than during his first term, when the two sides held summits.

Fox noted that "Trump's renewed approach comes as he is bogged down in a nuclear standoff with Iran, revisiting yet another piece of unfinished business from his first term," adding that "unlike Iran, North Korea already possesses mature nuclear weapons and a diverse range of delivery systems." Experts have long cited the vast gap between the two countries' nuclear capabilities as one reason the United States cannot take the same approach toward both countries.

Fox then said Trump had "narrowed the path to a deal more than eight years ago, leaving him little room to militarily eliminate the threat" — a sign that reaching an agreement would be harder than during his first term.

Drawing on expert opinion, Fox also raised the concern that Trump's real aim may be to divert domestic and international attention away from the Iran "quagmire" rather than to pursue North Korean denuclearization. In that scenario, the outlet warned, the most the United States could realistically extract from a North Korea negotiating from a stronger position than in Trump's first term would be a limited, partial agreement.

Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Trump "wants to get Iran off the front pages" and was blunt that "there is no military solution for a country like North Korea that has 50, 60, 70 nuclear weapons and multiple delivery systems for those weapons."

Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan US nonprofit, said "there is no grand bargain that quickly eliminates North Korea's nuclear weapons," adding that "North Korea can drive harder bargains in negotiations than it could in 2018."

Experts broadly agreed that the United States could offer North Korea phased sanctions relief, a reduction in joint US-South Korea military exercises or USFK force posture, and the prospect of a peace deal — and that the outcome could critically amount to granting Pyongyang its long-sought recognition as a nuclear-armed state.

Concerns were also widely shared that the US-South Korea alliance would face a serious test in the process. Cha said that on the question of USFK, "North Korea wants them out, South Korea wants them to stay, and what President Trump wants is entirely unclear."

The "One Trump a Day" series — "Know Trump, know the world" — delivers a daily digest of Trump-related news from the Herald Business international desk. Click "Original Article" below the headline and byline at the top of this page to find more Trump coverage.

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kate01@heraldcorp.com