Belfer Center experts offer insight and analysis of the Trump-Kim summit through statements and interviews.

President Trump surprised almost everyone—probably not the least Kim Jong-un—when he agreed to meet the North Korean leader at the end of May (now maybe early June). By accepting Kim’s invitation, President Trump overturned decades of conventional wisdom on how to separate North Korea from its nuclear and other WMD programs. If Trump and Kim meet—as of now this is still a big “if,” although North Korea has now confirmed its willingness to meet directly—the summit could be an important ice breaker and open up a chance to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis and bring peace to the Korean peninsula. But success, however remote it may seem, will require new thinking and entail major risks. It will also require a plan.

The abstracts in this booklet summarise the research presented at an academic symposium convened on the sidelines of the 2015 NPT Review Conference. As we write this, journalists and seasoned experts in the nuclear policy field have been speculating about the particularly difficult challenges facing the Review Conference this year. To address those challenges, we would urge all concerned to consider the ideas and analyses presented at this symposium. Experts would be hard-pressed to find a better collection of fresh ideas and approaches for assessing and strengthening the NPT.

In mid-March, the Belfer Center's Managing the Atom (MTA) Project, together with Professor Li Bin of Tsinghua University, convened back-to-back workshops in Beijing on ways to strengthen U.S.-Chinese cooperation across a broad agenda of issues.

"To facilitate enhanced Chinese support for North Korean denuclearization, Washington should also address some of Beijing's security concerns, including US-Japanese missile defense cooperation and sales of missile defense capabilities to Taiwan. The United States and China could also offer one another specific assurances regarding military deployments on the Korean peninsula. Even in the event of a North Korean collapse, the United States has no intention of moving its forces to the Chinese border; it would reduce Beijing's concerns if Washington said so."