When you come right down to it, the North Korea story can only end one of three ways:
- War. North Korea is destroyed at an unfathomable cost.
- Containment. There is no deal and no war. The status quo more or less continues, except the North Koreans finish work on their ICBM, the enforcement of sanctions weakens, and we place more military assets in South Korea to prevent the unraveling of the alliance.
- Trump settles for a deal for a phased, partial rollback of the North Korean nuclear and missile programs in exchange for sanctions relief and promises of future economic aid. Kim accepts the sanctions relief and ultimately (and predictably) chooses to keep the nukes he considers essential in lieu of taking the aid.
None of these alternatives includes Kim voluntarily giving up all of his nukes. That simply isn’t going to happen. Bolton has figured that out. I doubt Trump has yet.