By Troy Stangarone
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When Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un meet in Hanoi later this week the tendency to immediately judge the results will be on full display, but should it?
During the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords were initially seen as a loss by the West. In the analysis at the time, the Soviet Union got the better end of the deal as the Accords finalized the borders in Europe after World War II and included calls for territorial integrity and the principle that boarders should change peacefully. This led to concerns that the West had permanently left those living in areas occupied by the Soviet Union during the war behind the Iron Curtain.
However, in time, the human rights provisions of the Accords played an important role in helping to pave the way for the end of the Cold War.
Similarly, when Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik the summit collapsed without an agreement over the U.S. insistence that it be able to continue testing missile defenses. However, enough progress was made to conclude the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty a little more than a year later.
When Trump meets Kim, there will be certain elements the United States will be looking for in an agreement. The United States and North Korea still do not share a basic agreement on what denuclearization means. Clarity here will be one area of discussion.
A timeline for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons and missile programs will be another agenda item. Kim has suggested that he may be willing to dismantle the facilities at Yongbyon. Whether an agreement only includes those facilities or other facilities, the U.S. will be seeking to establish a timeline for dismantlement.
The role of inspectors will also be an issue for discussion. For an agreement to be successful the United States will need a way to verify North Korea has followed through on its commitments.
North Korea has been reluctant to allow inspectors, even when Kim has suggested he would allow inspectors into North Korea's nuclear test site at Pyunggye-ri and its missile test site near Sohae, they have yet to visit the facilities.
The United States will need to provide North Korea with corresponding measures for any steps agreed to in Hanoi.
North Korea has been pushing for sanctions relief. In his New Year address, Kim seemed to suggest that he wanted tourism at Mount Geumgang to resume and for the Gaeseong Industrial Complex to reopen, but sanctions relief could take other forms as well.
There has also been speculation that the United States could agree to an end-of-war declaration, and more recently that the U.S. would like to open liaison offices. All of these could be steps by the U.S. to match North Korea's efforts.
Whatever the specific steps, U.S. Envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun indicated in his remarks at Stanford that the U.S. is prepared to take measures to fulfill the commitments made in Singapore, suggesting that the U.S. is open to taking some steps North Korea is asking for in return for progress on dismantlement.
There are some outcomes, such as permanent sanctions relief without any means to inspect North Korean efforts toward dismantlement or a surprise similar to Singapore relating to U.S. troops that would clearly be a bad outcome on the path to eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons.
However, outside of those specific cases, we likely will not know if the agreement reached in Hanoi is a good deal or not until it has had time to be implemented.
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton has suggested as much. In December, he noted that a second summit is not so much about what North Korea says, but that "What we need to see is performance. And when we get performance then we can look at removing the economic sanctions."
Heading into the summit, many will likely be concerned that the U.S. will not reach a good deal. That may prove not to be warranted. At the same time, even if our initial inclination is to think that the agreement reach in Hanoi is a good deal we should remember, that until there has been time for the agreement to be implemented we won't really know if the deal achieved its objectives or not.
Troy Stangarone (ts@keia.org) is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.
