Trump-Kim Summit: Not looking good, folks...

Oh shit

WE ARE DOOMED... 

His lengthy explanation:

The word “denuclearization” is more or less native to the Korean Peninsula. This wasn’t the term experts used to talk about the elimination of nuclear weapons programs in South Africa, Iraq or Libya. In those contexts, the word was almost always “disarmament.”

“Denuclearization” [is] conveniently abstract. That allowed it to capture different aspects of what James Baker, [George H.W.] Bush’s secretary of state, called “the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula.” It covered at the same time the nuclear weapons that the United States withdrew from South Korea, the so-called “nuclear umbrella” of extended deterrence provided by the United States, and North Korea’s own nuclear weapons ambitions. [...]  Today, of course, things are very different than they were in 1992. There are no American nuclear weapons in South Korea (although the North Koreans don’t believe that, and some South Korean politicians have called for their return). More important, North Korea has moved in fits and starts to build a nuclear weapons capability that may be as large as 60 nuclear weapons, including a small number that can strike the United States.

North Korea’s disarmament is unlikely, except in the broader context of inter-Korean reconciliation and a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. (Even then, it seems like a long shot.) [...]   If the term “denuclearization” merely reduces the problem of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to a small challenge in the big context of a settlement of Korea’s division, then it is the right one.

Vipin Narang of MIT further elaborates:

That phrase — “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” — is a term of art that the United States and North Korea can interpret to suit their interests. 

Mr. Trump can walk away claiming that the phrase encompasses unilateral “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement,” or disarmament of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea can interpret the phrase to mean termination of the American security guarantee and nuclear umbrella to South Korea, or more literally, as universal disarmament by all nuclear countries. And the phrase commits North Korea to no concrete action — especially since it pledged only to “work towards” it.  

And presumably, as long as he freezes any further long-range-missile and nuclear testing, Mr. Kim will get at least a short-term freeze on American and South Korean military exercises.  He views them as provocative, a sign that his enemies are training to overthrow the regime. To his domestic audience, Mr. Kim can now present the end of this provocation as a signal of North Korea’s sovereignty and security. 

Mr. Kim also leaves Singapore having snuffed out the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. [...]  Having apparently helped get North Korea to the table, it is unlikely that China will ever again agree to a maximum pressure campaign. Tightening sanctions would only destabilize North Korea, and China fears a desperate and broken North Korea on its border more than it fears a nuclear North Korea. Even if sanctions by the US and the UN Security Council remain in place, without additional Chinese implementation, North Korea will find itself enjoying considerable breathing space. 

American allies in the region are not so sanguine. South Korea was taken by surprise by the sudden announcement of an end to joint military exercises. But it is Japan who is perhaps most terrified, because US-Japan exercises may be the next to go. Mr. Trump has chafed at the cost of America’s deployment in East Asia, and Mr. Kim led him right where he wanted to go. The only thing that may actually be dismantled is the architecture of America’s longstanding military alliance with Japan and South Korea.
 

So a bit of a nuance here.  James Hershberg, of George Washington University, adds:

Kim has only agreed (in his April 27 joint statement with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, reaffirmed when they met again on Saturday May 26) to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. That very different idea means that even in the remote scenario that Kim agreed to intrusive inspections inside North Korea, he would insist, inevitably and at a minimum, on reciprocal rights to inspect comparable locations in South Korea — for example, all US military bases (where around 30,000 troops are currently stationed) and probably South Korean ones as well, plus any and all US warships or aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons that enter South Korea’s waters or airspace. After all, they can argue, how else can the denuclearization of the entire peninsula be assured unless North Korean inspectors are allowed to snoop around all possible hiding places in South Korea, and the Americans withdraw and/or dismantle their bases or equipment capable of storing or using nuclear warheads—such as any dual-use (able to use conventional or nuclear) weapons that the US has deployed in South Korea for decades?