Despite praise for Tuesdays unprecedented meeting, there were good reasons why previous US administrations had refused multiple requests from North Korean leaders to meet. The results of the KimTrump summit so far can be divided into the good, the bad and the ugly.

The words historic and unprecedented to describe the meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un are literally true. But there were good reasons why previous US administrations had refused multiple requests from North Korean leaders to meet with the president. Against the historical and strategic backdrop, the results of the KimTrump summit so far can be divided into the good, the bad and the ugly.

The ugly

Inverting the order, it is distasteful for the leader of the free world to meet, on equal footing, the leader of one of the most horrific human rights abuser regimes, as documented in chilling detail in AIIA Fellow JusticeMichael Kirbys reportfor the UN Human Rights Council. Known colloquially in diplomatic circles as shaking hands with the devil in order to make progress on the bigger picture, there is no shortage of precedent for this transactional calculation.

But the praise showered on the very talented Kim by Trump at thepress conferenceafterwards, along with the claim that one of the great winners from the summit were the prisoners in North Koreas gulags, was nauseating. While Trump conceded that the human rights situation in North Korea was rough, he relativised it by noting: Its rough in a lot of places, by the way. The claim of having developed a very special bond with a murderous dictator came immediately after the gratuitous insults hurled at Americas closest allies at the acrimoniousG7 summitin Canada.

During the press conference following theSingapore Declaration which, by the way, is neither a deal nor a treaty Trump gave away still more. Worse, he bought into the narrative peddled by North Korea and China on the causes of the crisis: joint USSouth Korea exercises are provocations, the war games will end and Trump strongly looks forward to bringing home all 32,000 US soldiers from Korea. Trump may well have shaken the foundations of the US alliance structure in the Asia-Pacific. Japan in particular will be left wondering where to go next for national security.

The bad

The bad began with the agreement to hold a summit without first requiring some concrete actions on denuclearisation. This handed Kim the invaluable prize of global legitimacy as the head of a nuclear-armed state who had succeeded in meeting the US president as an equal_because_he got the bomb. Forget the fact they were acquired illegally.

All the major concessions to Kim were front-loaded while concessions by North Korea will come downstream. All we have now are promises that have been made several times before and serially broken: a summit to begin instead of ending the denuclearisation process; efforts to organise reciprocal visits by Kim and Trump to each other; North Koreas formulation of denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula (meaning also an end to the US nuclear umbrella for Seoul) rather than the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation (the famous CVID so beloved of wonks) of North Korea; establishment of relations with the US; regime security; an end to provocative military exercises, etc.

A deal with Iran with concrete action outcomes that included stringent international verification and enforcement has been mothballed because Trumps bte noir Barack Obama signed it. But a vague promise from North Korea to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is a wonderful deal?

Not surprisingly, signs of disagreement have already cropped up. Speaking at a press conference in Seoul in the presence of South Koreas and Japans foreign ministers on 14 June, Secretary of StateMike Pompeo saidthat North Korea will not see any sanctions lifted until it has demonstrated complete denuclearisation. A day earlier, Pompeo had said that it was hoped to achieve North Koreanmajor disarmament by 2020during Trumps first term in office. Conversely, the US will resume joint military exercises with South Korea if the talks stall.

Theunexpected big winner from the summit is China: its roadmap for Korean peace has been effectively endorsed. North Korea is retained as a strategic buffer. China holds pole position to be the key player in the search for a peace regime in a denuclearised Korean Peninsula. A wedge is being driven among US Pacific allies to match trans-Atlantic divisions. Beijing, which accounts for over 80 per cent of North Koreas trade, is unlikely to revert to strong sanctions. Only it can offer fallback guarantees to the Kim regime and family should the US breach the Singapore Declaration and return to military threats. An end to USSouth Korea war games will lower the US military profile and in turn raise Chinas in the AsiaPacific.

The good

The good lies in the start of a diplomatic process. Sanctions by themselves were a dead end and military strikes are too costly to contemplate. The only hope for a resolution is through dialogue and negotiation that will require mutual accommodation of wants that are merely desirable, in order to achieve all sides bottom lines. Because the nuclear file is the most critical, it makes sense to quarantine this from other troubling aspects of North Koreas behaviour, much as was done with Iran. The upside of a summit to kick-start the political process is the two leaders have invested their personal prestige and authority and can instruct officials to implement their vision, overcoming bureaucratic and institutional resistance. Should the pugnaciousJohn Bolton seek to sabotage the deal, for example, Trump can simply fire him: that will hardly be news.

Compared to the real fears of a nuclear showdown when Kim and Trump escalated their bellicose rhetoric last year, the series of inter-Korean, Kim-Xi Jinping and USNorth Korean summits have already produced a remarkable relaxation of tensions. As Professor Moon Chung-in, special adviser to President Moon Jae-in, notes, the commitment-for-commitment was the easy part; now comes thehard part of matching action-for-action.

Professor Ramesh Thakur FAIIA, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general, is a professor emeritus at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.