Will Trump and Xi ‘Solve’ North Korea?

The centerpiece of President Trump’s conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday will doubtless be North Korea. Before their first meeting in April, Trump’s message to Xi was unmistakable: You solve this problem, or I will, and you won’t like the way I do it. Then, just after he served Xi and his wife chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago, Trump excused himself and went to an adjacent room to announce that the U.S. was launching 59 cruise missiles against Syria. Message: I’m serious.

President Trump has repeatedly complained that his predecessors left him a mess in North Korea, with an emboldened regime in Pyongyang that threatens to soon have a credible capability to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon. “It should have never been given to me,” he told an interviewer in October. “This should have been solved long before I came to office, when it would have been easier to solve. But it was given to me and I get it solved. I solve problems.”

But will President Trump really “solve” North Korea? The answer is most certainly no. Indeed, I am so confident in answering no that I am prepared to bet $100 of my money—against $1 of anyone who wants to wager—that when Trump leaves office, a nuclear-armed North Korea will remain a major challenge for his successor.