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虽然两人“坠入爱河”，但特朗普和金正恩的会面难以达到预期效果。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
bromance [ˈbrəʊmæns] n.男子之间的交情（非基情）
uranium [juˈreɪniəm] n.铀
plutonium [pluːˈtəʊniəm] n.钚
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Demetri Sevastopulo
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When Donald Trump has dinner with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi on Wednesday, their relationship will have come a long way since he slammed the North Korean leader during his last visit to Vietnam.
“Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me ‘old’, when I would never call him ‘short and fat?’” Mr Trump tweeted in 2017 just after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Since then, the leaders have held a historic summit in Singapore and formed a unique bond that — helped by “beautiful letters” from Mr Kim — resulted in Mr Trump saying that the pair “fell in love”.
Yet as the bromance blossoms, the US has struggled in the eight months since Singapore to convert the declaration signed by Mr Trump and Mr Kim into real steps towards denuclearisation. And while Mr Trump said after that meeting that North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat”, his intelligence chiefs have contradicted him by saying Mr Kim is unlikely to abandon his nuclear weapons.
Mr Trump has lowered expectations for his two-day summit with Mr Kim by saying his policy has already been successful. On Sunday, he said he was “ not in a rush” to pressure Mr Kim and was “happy” as long as he maintained his 15-month long freeze on missile and nuclear tests.
Jung Pak, a former CIA North Korea expert, said the White House appeared to have realised that Mr Kim was not going to denuclearise quickly given its behaviour since Singapore.
“In the lead-up to the Singapore summit and right after the summit, there was a lot of talk about six to nine months’ complete abandonment of nuclear weapons and in a way unrealistic maximalist demands on North Korea,” said Ms Pak, who studied Mr Kim at the CIA. “There has been considerable softening in part because the North Koreans are so good at being stubborn and intransigent.”
But Ms Pak warned that there was a danger Mr Trump would lose leverage with his rhetoric. “If the president is not concerned, then what is Kim’s incentive to even offer anything for this summit?”
Mr Trump and Mr Kim will have their first meeting on Wednesday evening. After a 20-minute private conversation, they will have dinner before meeting again on Thursday for their formal summit. That will begin with a second private one-on-one meeting, and then continue with lunch and meetings with their aides.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Trump pushed back against Democrats who have criticised his approach to North Korea. “The Democrats should stop talking about what I should do with North Korea and ask themselves instead why they didn’t do ‘it’ during eight years of the Obama Administration?” he tweeted before setting up for meetings with the Vietnamese president and prime minister.
At the start of his meeting with President Nguyen Phu Trong, Mr Trump said he “felt very good about having this summit in Vietnam because you really are an example of what can happen with good thinking”.
Mr Trump held up the country as an economic model for Pyongyang if it abandons its nuclear weapons. “Vietnam is thriving like few places on earth. North Korea would be the same, and very quickly, if it would denuclearize,” he tweeted. “The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity, like almost none other in history, for my friend Kim Jong Un. We will know fairly soon — Very Interesting!”
Ahead of the summit, speculation has mounted that the leaders will agree to open liaison offices and may declare an official end to the 1950-53 Korean war that concluded with an armistice.
But critics say Mr Trump must demand a complete inventory of the North Korean nuclear programme for the summit to be successful. They also worry that Mr Trump may go further than advised by his aides — for example, by agreeing to cut the number of US troops in South Korea — in his private meeting with Mr Kim. In Singapore, Mr Trump stunned aides by announcing without warning that he would halt military exercises on the peninsula.
Victor Cha, a former US-North Korea negotiator, said the question ahead of the Hanoi meeting was “whether the president can do no harm”. Some experts believe Mr Kim may let inspectors visit two sites — the Tongchang-ri missile facility and Punggye-ri nuclear test site — that it claims to have partly dismantled. But Mr Cha says that would be a hollow win because the sites are no longer needed.
“Trump will claim it’s a big victory. He will claim no US president has ever closed a nuclear test site where there have been six tests . . . He would be factually correct but it is materially irrelevant,” he said.
Steve Biegun, the top US-North Korea negotiator, recently said Mr Kim had signalled a willingness to destroy uranium and plutonium facilities at Yongbyon, the country’s main nuclear facility. Mr Cha said it was crucial that Mr Trump did not reward Mr Kim before that with liaison offices and other moves such as relaxing sanctions on a joint South-North Korea industrial park or removing forces from South Korea.
“The right way would be to provide a declaration and a timeline and then the follow-on would be negotiating inspectors coming in to locate facilities,” said Mr Cha.
While some experts privately credit Mr Trump with lowering tensions on the peninsula, many are sceptical that his approach will bear fruit. But others believe the relationship with Mr Kim will be the critical factor in determining whether North Korea will ever denuclearise.
David Kim, a North Korea expert at the Stimson Center, a think-tank, said Mr Trump needed to secure some “verifiable and concrete steps towards denuclearisation” but that success in Hanoi should be viewed through a much broader lens.
“Success should not be defined by how quickly North Korea denuclearises, but by how fast we can get to a place in our relationship where North Korea doesn’t feel like it needs to rely on their weapons for regime survival,” he said.
Moon Chung-in, an adviser to South Korean president Moon Jae-in, said the trust Mr Trump and Mr Kim were building was essential. “Kim seems to believe that he can make a deal with President Trump,” he said. “Kim really appreciates the way Trump handles him, namely recognition, praises, expression of personal affinity, all of which he has never experienced in the past.”
But most experts agree that any path to denuclearisation will not be easy. Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a think-tank, said that despite a series of negotiations, the US and North Korea had no shared understanding about the meaning of “denuclearisation”.
Mr Fontaine said the summit might provide some results — such as the liaison offices, which would allow inspectors into North Korea, some sanctions relief and the destruction of Yongbyon — but that those measures would make no dent in the nuclear arsenal Mr Kim has amassed.
“All that may resemble progress of a fashion, but what it won’t amount to is . . . denuclearisation,” said Mr Fontaine. “Anything is possible, especially when Trump and Kim are in the room. But we may well be no closer to denuclearisation than when we started this high-profile diplomatic initiative.”
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A.Washington
B.Pyongyang
C.Beijing
D.Hanoi
答案 (1)
A.Call for an action
B.Report an event
C.Expression an opinion
D.Make fun of Trump
答案 (2)
A.Democratization
B.Deportation
C.Denuclearisation
D.Development
答案 (3)
(1) 答案：D. Hanoi解释：When Donald Trump has dinner with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi on Wednesday, their relationship will have come a long way since he slammed the North Korean leader during his last visit to Vietnam.
(2) 答案：B. Report an event
(3) 答案：C. Denuclearisation解释：“All that may resemble progress of a fashion, but what it won’t amount to is . . . denuclearisation,” said Mr Fontaine. “Anything is possible, especially when Trump and Kim are in the room. But we may well be no closer to denuclearisation than when we started this high-profile diplomatic initiative.”