It was his second withdrawal from an arms-control or nuclear-nonproliferation agreement, following the U.S. departure last year from the nuclear deal that his predecessor negotiated with Iran and other world powers. And it was in keeping with the Trump administration’s exit from other Obama-era international pacts ranging from the Paris climate-change accord to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement. A recent White House rundown of the president’s accomplishments during his first two years in office includes, by The Atlantic’s count, three scrapped deals, two renegotiated deals, five negotiations or renegotiations of deals that are in the works (including Trump’s threatened withdrawal from the Universal Postal Union), and no brand new deals.
If the dream of a peaceful, prosperous, denuclearized Korean peninsula is to become a reality, North Korea’s leaders, who have deeply distrusted the United States for decades, will have to believe that Trump (and whoever succeeds him) will honor the grand bargain that Biegun has in mind—a long shot that Friday’s move may make longer. And Trump himself will have to prove as accomplished a dealmaker as a dealbreaker.
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