it's the "Art of the Deal" solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis: The US gets North Korea's ended nuclear threat, and Kim Jong Un gets to keep his nuclear weapons
While Trump wants North Korea's nuclear program ended, Kim Jong Un wants it sustained. The North Korean leader believes that surrendering his nuclear weapons would mean surrendering his guarantee against any future coup attempt or foreign invasions.
The beauty of this approach is its balance in matching Kim Jong Un's sense of a survival guarantee to the US sense of eliminated threat.
In essence, North Korea's short-term nuclear threat would be removed, but its long-term threat potential sustained, albeit on a basis manageable for the US.
Would South Korea accept this deal even though it would only reduce, not remove, the nuclear threat it faced? I would suggest the answer is a confident yes. Seoul
has been happy to appease Kim Jong Un in order to avoid that which it most fears: a new conflict on the peninsula.
Is this a perfect solution? No. But it is the best solution likely available.
While Kim Jong Un seems
genuinely interested in a grand deal with the U.S., he is not going to give up his perceived golden ticket to long-term regime survival. The Trump administration's current approach is unrealistic in intent and, in necessarily refusing to give Kim Jong Un the sanctions relief he desires absent his concessions first,
risks a near-term return to North Korean missile testing. If that happens, America will have to choose between force and appeasement.