Trump has put North Korea in a bind it can't escape at this point

Asia Times:

Back in March of last year, the Kim Jong Un regime told a group of South Korean special envoys that it was willing to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and normalization of its relations with the US. According to the interlocutors, Pyongyang also promised that it would refrain from conducting further missile and nuclear tests so long as its prospective talks with Washington continued.

That pledge was apparently intended to lock Washington into negotiations until the Kim regime got what it wanted. But the US has flipped the script, as it now appears that North Korea is the one bound to a negotiation process that can only move forward when Washington’s demands are met.

If Pyongyang follows through on its recent threats to walk away from the negotiations and resume testing of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, it will destroy any chance it has of obtaining sanctions relief, and its actions could trigger a new round of international sanctions. On the other hand, Pyongyang is unlikely to get sanctions lifted via the negotiations unless and until it offers up unprecedented concessions on denuclearization.

Eventually, the US and North Korea will need to reach a compromise that will allow them to advance their negotiations. But US President Donald Trump’s administration would be well advised to exercise patience and give Pyongyang time to consider how far it is willing to go to obtain sanctions relief.

US disarms North Korea … figuratively
The North Korean regime has for decades argued that the US poses an existential threat and that Washington’s “hostile policies” are the primary obstacle to achieving a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

Over the past year, the Trump administration has methodically dismantled that argument by demonstrating extraordinary flexibility on US policies and practices that Pyongyang has deemed offensive, leaving the Kim regime with little more than procedural objections to denuclearization (Pyongyang insists that the sanctions on North Korea must be eased before it will take any meaningful steps towards relinquishing its nuclear weapons).

President Trump – against the advice of many foreign-policy experts and even some in his own administration – has bent over backwards to build a strong personal relationship with Kim Jong Un. He has made the sort of respectful gestures that North Korea’s rulers have long wanted from a US leader, but which previous US presidents refrained from making for fear of diminishing their leverage over Pyongyang and legitimizing a brutal dictatorship.

Not only has Trump twice flown to Asia to meet with Kim on an equal footing, he has also gone out of his way to praise the North Korean autocrat as a “great leader” and a “friend”.

If such personal attention and kind words weren’t enough to convince Kim and his cronies that the US bears them no ill will, top US officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his predecessor Rex Tillerson, and former secretary of defense Jim Mattis all stated explicitly that the US does not seek regime change in North Korea. And Washington has backed up its words with actions.
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There is more.

Trump has played his hand well, but I think Obama and Clinton's strategic blunder in overthrowing the Libyan regime after it denuclearized has made the task of denuclearizing North Korea more difficult.  The regime change policies of the past have made securing a deal more difficult than it should be.