Hanoi summit failure? Not quite — Kim now owes Trump big time

A seasoned Asia hand called the Hanoi summit “Trump’s spectacular failure in Vietnam.” A Washington pundit labelled it “a diplomatic disaster.”  China’s Global Times said it achieved “not even nominal success.”

Yet, despite those dire assessments of the immediate outcome, the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, in fact, greatly strengthened Washington’s longer-term negotiating position and advanced the prospect of North Korea’s denuclearization, either peacefully or by a return to the maximum pressure campaign.

Even the president’s regrettable response to a question on the death of American student Otto Warmbier perversely opened the door to renewed emphasis on North Korea’s human rights record, one of the three elements of leverage over Pyongyang, and Beijing.  (The others were the sanctions and the “fire and fury” threats of force.)

How did the failure to secure a declaration of all North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, let alone a specific commitment to destroy them, somehow move the ball forward?

First, Kim offered to meet Washington’s goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of at least the major nuclear complex at Yongbyon with its 300 different facilities.  It is not nearly enough to justify lifting all or a major share of economic sanctions, but it is also not nothing, and at minimum provides a starting point for the next phase of negotiations.