Efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program have failed

The dust has now settled on the flashy summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang earlier this month. But perhaps the biggest takeaway was what was left unsaid.

Statements in Chinese from the summit obviously excluded There is talk of nuclear disarmament in North Korea (meaning that North Korea has given up its nuclear weapons). This marks a departure from Beijing’s decades-long policy goal.

This is the latest in a long list of setbacks to international efforts to denuclearize North Korea, and my soon-to-be-published research shows that experts are widely concerned about the depth of this challenge.