What Trump needs to keep in mind in his summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un:
The second leadership summit about to begin between the United States and North Korea on North Korean denuclearization has prompted much debate. The results of the upcoming engagement between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will emerge, possibly in unexpected ways, over the next few days.
A likely goal for this latest summit might be to solidify an agreement aimed at preventing new North Korean testing of both nuclear weapons and the intercontinental ballistic missile delivery vehicles that would be required to attack the United States with those weapons. These must be the first irrevocable steps toward the ultimate denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
As the talks proceed, it is important to bear in mind that the only thing Kim and his regime really respect is hard power and President Trump's assessed willingness to use it. This hinges critically on the reality of America’s asymmetric airpower advantage for effectively countering North Korea—most notably stealth, in particular, as embodied in the B-2, B-21, F-22, and F-35 combat aircraft that constitute America’s principal means of rapid, survivable, and decisive power projection.