Former Trump NSC North Korea director says initial meeting could come before November midterms, with follow-up summit next year; experts warn North Korea's leverage has grown and caution against rushing to a leaders-level deal

US President Donald Trump (right) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un talk as they leave the summit venue in Singapore in June 2018. [Reuters]
US President Donald Trump (right) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un talk as they leave the summit venue in Singapore in June 2018. [Reuters]

A former US official has said Donald Trump is likely to hold an initial meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to open dialogue, with a second US-North Korea summit potentially following after the November midterm elections.

Anthony Ruggiero, who served as the National Security Council's North Korea director during the first Trump administration, said Sunday on PBS that "President Trump will probably just meet with Kim Jong-un to get the conversation started."

Ruggiero said a second summit could follow after the midterm elections in early November or sometime next year, suggesting Trump may first meet Kim before the midterms to break the ice before pursuing follow-up talks.

He said there is a need to implicitly acknowledge the reality that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, after which negotiations could shift focus to issues of greater importance to the United States — such as the withdrawal of North Korean troops from Ukraine.

Ruggiero said that while he had previously focused on North Korea's denuclearization, his thinking had shifted toward accepting the reality of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.

"The question for the president and his advisers is whether they can get an agreement with North Korea that produces real results, and whether they can manage countries that might see this as a green light for their own nuclear programs," he said, adding, "I think we have enough incentives and deterrents to prevent that."

He did not name those countries directly, but the remarks appeared to refer to South Korea and Japan.

On Trump's order to scale back joint US-South Korea military exercises, Ruggiero said, "The only thing that surprised me was that President Trump didn't do it last year," adding that Trump "has strong views on that."

Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said that even working-level contacts — such as reopening the New York channel between the United States and North Korea — would represent a significant achievement, and recommended maintaining strategic ambiguity.

"We don't need to tell North Korea, 'We recognize you as a nuclear state,'" she said. "There's no reason to give away all the leverage we have."

Lee said Kim has strengthened ties with Russia and China while Trump is also reaching out, adding that "Kim Jong-un will think he has a lot of leverage and is in an incredibly advantageous position."

Bruce Klingner, a senior fellow at the Mansfield Foundation, said Trump wants a major deal he can tout as a success, but warned that North Korea would employ a "salami-slicing" tactic — breaking demands and concessions into small pieces. "North Korea will want to be rewarded just for showing up at the negotiating table, and will keep asking for more," he said.

Klingner said there are in effect no advisers around Trump willing to speak frankly, raising the risk of a deal that does not serve US interests. He said a conventional bottom-up approach — working through a working-level agenda before moving to a leaders-level deal, even if it takes time — would be preferable.


mokiya@heraldcorp.com