that he was not seeking the Libya model in which Muammar al-Qaddafi gave up his nascent nuclear weapons program but was subsequently captured and killed by pro-U.S. rebels. Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said, “The Libyan model is not a model that we have at all when we are thinking of North Korea….With Kim Jong Un…he would be there, he’d be in his country, he’d be running his country, his country would be very rich.” (Secretary of State Pompeo, also a businessman before he entered politics and was elected to Congress, echoed similar points. After his first meeting with Kim in April 2018, he told Face the Nation that the United States would make it financially worthwhile for Kim if he abandoned his nuclear weapons: “What Chairman Kim will get from America is our finest. Our entrepreneurs….They will get private capital that comes in.” He also promised “American know-how, knowledge entrepreneurs, and risk takers working alongside the North Korean people to create a robust economy.”)
In stamping his own preferences onto Kim, Trump appeared to have reinforced his own confidence that he could make a deal, in contrast to all the failed nuclear negotiations of the past. “Vision is my best asset,” he told Playboy in 1990. “I know what sells and I know what people want.” Before the meeting with Kim, Time magazine, citing a senior official, reported in mid-May that President Trump did not think that he needed to prepare. A Republican adviser admitted to HuffPost that “he thinks that all he needs to do is get into a room with Kim for two hours, and he thinks he can get it all worked out.” The adviser also said that Trump knows almost nothing about disarmament issues or the background of why Kim would want a summit with a sitting U.S. president to advance his own ambitions. And less than a week before the actual meeting in Singapore, Trump even boasted about his lack of preparation—“I think I’m very well prepared….I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about the attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done”—suggesting that he believed that the sheer force of his charm and deal-making prowess could finally convince Kim to see the light and give up his nuclear weapons. Apparently, the White House had not convened a cabinet-level meeting to discuss the summit with North Korea, as President Trump continued to eschew the traditional decision-making processes, which had been designed to ensure a whole-of-government approach to national security problems. These were worrisome developments, because when Trump was in the room with Kim, there would be no one to check his assumptions about what Kim wanted and what Trump could deliver.
If Kim were a businessman, like one of the many contractors, land developers, and investors Trump had dealt with over the years, this type of man-to-man approach to negotiations might have worked. One can imagine that the real estate mogul in Trump saw Kim as wanting the same wealth, glory, and acclaim that he had once promised his business partners. “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day,” the president tweeted in the run-up to the summit. His administration held fast to this theme after Singapore, even though there was little to suggest that Kim saw this as a compelling reason to give up his nuclear weapons. Before the second summit, which was held in Hanoi on February 27–28, 2019, the White House announced, “The President has made clear that should North Korea follow through on its commitment to complete denuclearization, we will work to ensure there are economic development options.” Four months later, the president continued to see resolution of this complicated national security issue as revolving around his personal rapport with Kim. Just hours before their third meeting, this time at the DMZ, Trump touted his “chemistry” with Kim and underscored its importance: “And sometimes that can lead to very good things.”
But Kim is not a businessman, and wealth—in Trump’s sense of the word—is not what he was looking for as he continued his maximum engagement strategy. Trump’s mirror-imaging had the potential to lead to policymaking that did not comport with the realities of this thorny problem. Kim is highly unlikely to give up his nuclear weapons in order to get a McDonald’s franchise in Pyongyang. And we are well aware by now that his pivot toward engagement was most likely aimed at trying to reduce