Risks are clear in Trump-Kim meeting

The meeting between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is set to go ahead, with the former saying a date and location were set, though they have not yet been announced.
Trump is upbeat about the get-together. Sure to inflate his already formidable ego even more, there have been suggestions that he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in bringing amity to the Korean Peninsula, even though peace is still a long way off.
Trump should not be letting such talk go to his head. People too often make remarks only to advance their own private agenda, or simply just as a way of trying to be nice. But was the sudden change in rhetoric in North Korea the result of Trump’s words and actions – or were there other factors involved?
North Korea has never said it would give up its nuclear-weapons programme. It is simply no longer testing nuclear devices or missiles, for reasons that remain obscure. It has invited the foreign press to visit the country and bear witness to the fact that operations have already ceased at its test site.
Many nice words were exchanged at the recent summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. 
Their meeting was pregnant with possibilities. But, like everything else, the devil is in the details. Trump has been playing up his own meeting with Kim, though it is admittedly a big deal.
North Korea’s leadership has been seeking to meet an American president since the 1970s, so Trump is quite right to call the coming event a “unique moment”. 
What he is not seeing, or simply wants to downplay, is that his meeting with Kim will do much to legitimise the Pyongyang regime.
For the first time, the leader of a rogue and oftentimes dangerous state will be sitting down with an American president on equal terms. This is the reason Trump’s predecessors all the way back to Dwight Eisenhower shunned such a meeting. 
Judging by past performance, Trump will almost certainly be ill prepared for the discussion, adding to the unnecessary risk.
International negotiations normally begin with low-level officials and work up to a leadership summit. Trump, of course, is not normal. He seeks personal glory regardless of the risk for his country and global stability.
The ideological and strategic interests of Pyongyang and Washington are so widely separated that Trump has little or no hope of bridging the gap. But, driven by ego and desperate to earn credentials as a serious world leader, Trump is rushing forward and in his myopia helping give the reclusive regime legitimacy while receiving nothing tangible in return.
North Korea will be negotiating not from a position of weakness but from one of strength. 
It has developed the ability to strike the continental United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile.
It is arrogant to suggest that the North Koreans are talking to the South and the US because of pressure from Trump or because of Moon’s readiness to engage. Pyongyang is heedless of foreign opinion and international pressure. It is engaging with Seoul and Washington not because of a sudden interest in peace but in the pursuit of concessions.
Kim will be coming to the table with a loaded gun.