The United States and North Korea have hit a stumbling block in negotiations. The core cause of this slowdown is a disagreement over what comes first: denuclearization or the initiation of a peace process. Confronting this source of tension is not in itself a worrying sign; it means negotiations have begun in earnest.

If it can be generally agreed that the reason for the difference in preferred sequencing lies in the lingering mistrust that the two sides harbor towards one another, there is less agreement over how to break that mistrust and make progress towards a denuclearization