The overtures from President Trump to one of his favorite dictators came hot and heavy over the summer.
整个夏天，特朗普总统都在接二连三地向他最喜欢的其中一位独裁者示好。
In June, Mr. Trump posted a photo of himself strolling through the tropical grounds of a luxury hotel with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, during their historic summit in Singapore eight years ago.
6月，特朗普发布了一张照片，是他与朝鲜领导人金正恩八年前在新加坡历史性峰会期间在一家豪华酒店的热带庭院里漫步的场景。
Weeks later, he wrote online that the two had a “very good relationship.”
几周后，他在网上写道，两人的“关系非常好”。
In that post, Mr. Trump announced that the American military would dial back exercises with South Korea, shocking the close U.S. ally and handing Mr. Kim a gift. Three days later, when a reporter asked whether he would meet with Mr. Kim this year, the American president said, “Yeah, I will be.”
特朗普在那篇帖子中宣布，美军将缩减与韩国的联合军演规模，这一决定令美国的亲密盟友韩国大为震惊，却让金正恩白白得到了一份大礼。三天后，有记者问他今年是否会与金正恩会面，这位美国总统回答：“会，我会的。”
The courtship is on. The question in the coming weeks is whether it will be requited.
示好正在上演。未来几周的问题是，对方是否会予以回应。
Mr. Trump is expected to discuss North Korea with Xi Jinping, the leader of China, when Mr. Xi makes a state visit to Washington next week. China is North Korea’s oldest and most important ally.
预计特朗普将在中国领导人习近平下周对华盛顿进行国事访问时与其讨论朝鲜问题。中国是朝鲜历史最悠久、最重要的盟友。
Mr. Trump said he had spoken with Mr. Xi about North Korea during his visit to Beijing in May, weeks before he posted the photo taken in Singapore.
特朗普说，他5月访问北京期间曾与习近平谈到朝鲜问题。几周后，他发布了那张在新加坡拍摄的照片。
Mr. Xi is reluctant to have the United States and North Korea grow closer. But he could see helping broker a Trump-Kim summit as a favor to Mr. Trump and a way to gain leverage on other U.S.-China issues, a former Trump administration official said. It would also give Mr. Xi some control over the diplomacy.
习近平并不愿看到美朝走得过近。但一名前特朗普政府官员说，他也可能把帮助促成特朗普与金正恩的峰会视为卖给特朗普一个人情，并借此在美中其他议题上获得筹码。这也会让习近平在相关外交活动中拥有一定的掌控权。
For Mr. Trump, a summit with Mr. Kim would help him turn the spotlight away from the unpopular and costly war that he and Israel started against Iran and toward a leader-to-leader relationship that Mr. Trump has treasured since his first term, according to current and former officials and analysts.
现任和前任官员及分析人士表示，对特朗普来说，与金正恩举行峰会将有助于把外界的注意力从他与以色列对伊朗发动的那场不得人心、代价高昂的战争上移开，转向他从第一任期起就十分看重的这种领导人之间的关系。
Although Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim failed to reach a nuclear agreement during their second summit, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019, the American president still feels a personal bond with the North Korean dictator, they say. He also values spectacle for the sake of spectacle and revels in main character energy.
他们说，尽管特朗普和金正恩在2019年越南河内第二次峰会上未能达成核协议，但这位美国总统仍然觉得自己与这位朝鲜独裁者有着私人情谊。他也看重为场面而场面的戏剧效果，并陶醉于主角光环。
From Mr. Trump’s perspective, resetting the relationship with North Korea “would be a big win,” said Nicholas J.C. Snyder, a career diplomat who worked in embassies in Asia and in the White House during Mr. Trump’s first administration.
曾于特朗普第一任期内在亚洲多国的美国大使馆和白宫任职的职业外交官尼古拉斯·斯奈德说，在特朗普看来，重启与朝鲜的关系“将是一场重大胜利”。
2018年，特朗普与金正恩在新加坡。特朗普对金正恩赞不绝口——他曾说，两人“坠入爱河”。“It’s been on his mind since Day 1,” said Mr. Snyder, now a business consultant and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative foreign policy research group. “And it’s also on the mind of those from Trump 1 who came back for Trump 2. It’s part of his administration’s desire to take care of unfinished business in foreign policy.”
“从第一天起，他就一直惦记着这件事，”斯奈德说。他现在是一名商业顾问，也是保守派外交政策研究机构哈德逊研究所的高级研究员。“那些从特朗普第一届政府回归第二届政府的人也一直惦记着这件事。这也是本届政府希望了结外交政策上一系列未竟之事的一部分”
A Trump-Kim meeting could be timed to a potential trip by Mr. Trump to an annual Asian economic summit that Mr. Xi will host in southern China in November.
特朗普与金正恩的会面可能会安排在特朗普有望前往参加11月于中国南方举行的一年一度亚洲经济峰会期间，届时习近平将担任东道主。
Unlike the Trump-Kim exchanges of effusive letters during the first Trump administration, Mr. Kim has yet to answer the American president’s overtures this time. Mr. Kim’s sister and close aide, Kim Yo-jong, said last month that she knew of no communications between her brother and Mr. Trump.
与特朗普第一届政府时期特朗普和金正恩互通信件、热情洋溢的情形不同，这一次金正恩迄今尚未回应这位美国总统的示好。金正恩的心腹、胞妹金与正上个月说，据她所知，她的哥哥与特朗普之间没有任何联系。
She also said that any reduction in U.S.-South Korea military exercises would not change “the provocative and offensive nature of them.”
她还说，美韩军事演习的规模无论如何缩减，都不会改变“它们的挑衅和进攻性质”。
Perhaps Mr. Kim is playing hardball because he thinks he is in a position of strength. He has been testing ballistic missiles and building up a nuclear weapons program while Mr. Trump has been mired in the war with Iran.
金正恩之所以态度强硬或许是因为他认为自己目前处于强势地位。在特朗普深陷对伊朗战争之际，金正恩一直在试射弹道导弹，继续推进核武器计划。
Since 2018 during his first term, Mr. Trump has delighted in his diplomacy with Mr. Kim. After an initial summit in Singapore, the two negotiated over North Korea’s nuclear program in Hanoi in February 2019, though they walked away without a deal. The flame seemed to fade. But they stoked the embers four months later, when Mr. Trump became the first American president to step across the border from South Korea into the North, where he shook Mr. Kim’s hand.
自2018年第一任期以来，特朗普一直对自己与金正恩展开的外交活动津津乐道。在新加坡举行首次峰会后，两人于2019年2月在河内就朝鲜核计划展开谈判，但最终没有达成协议便各自离去。两人的热络关系似乎逐渐冷却。但四个月后，他们又让余烬复燃：特朗普成为首位跨过韩朝边界、踏上朝鲜土地的美国总统，并在那里与金正恩握手。
Mr. Trump has raved about Mr. Kim — the two “fell in love,” he once said, and he has shown visitors to the White House the “beautiful letters” the two men exchanged. Violating federal records rules, he took the correspondence to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, after he lost the 2020 election.
特朗普对金正恩赞不绝口——他曾说两人“坠入爱河”，还曾向白宫访客展示两人互通的那些“美丽的信件”。2020年大选落败后，他违反联邦档案管理规定，把这些信件带到了自己位于佛罗里达州的马阿拉歌庄园。
“I’m not sure there is much more to Trump’s strategy than summitry itself. This is purely about the theatrics of a meeting,” said John Delury, a professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. “I think he’s waiting for Kim to send a positive signal back. Then he’ll tell his team to make it happen.”
“我不确定特朗普的策略除了峰会本身之外还有多少其他内容。这纯粹是为了会面的戏剧效果，”南京大学-约翰斯·霍普金斯大学中美文化研究中心的国际政治学教授鲁乐汉(John Delury)说。“我认为他在等金正恩发回积极信号。然后他就会告诉自己的团队去促成这件事。”
“He’s always liked North Korea, even if it didn’t work out well the first time around,” Mr. Delury added.
“他一直很喜欢朝鲜，即便第一次并没有取得什么好结果，”鲁乐汉补充说。
习近平并不愿看到美朝走得过近。但一名前特朗普政府官员说，他也可能把帮助促成特朗普与金正恩的峰会视为卖给特朗普一个人情，并借此在美中其他议题上获得筹码。In past administrations, informal representatives from each country would meet in the hopes of opening the door to official dialogue. But those conversations stopped years ago. During the pandemic, North Korea sealed its borders and halted contact with the outside world.
在以往历届政府，两国的非正式代表会先举行会面，希望借此为正式对话打开大门。但这类接触多年前就已经停止。新冠疫情期间，朝鲜关闭边境，中断了与外部世界的接触。
North Korea has less need to build ties with the United States now. Its economy is stronger than it has been in many years. And the country has bolstered its diplomatic and military positions through its alliances with China and Russia.
如今，朝鲜与美国建立关系的需要已经没有以前那么迫切。它的经济处于多年来的最好时期。与此同时，朝鲜还通过与中国和俄罗斯结盟，巩固了自己的外交和军事地位。
Mr. Kim signed a mutual defense agreement with Russia two years after the country’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. North Korean forces have been fighting alongside the Russians against the Ukrainian military. Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin have met in each other’s countries. (A top aide to Mr. Putin said this month that the Russian leader might take part in a group meeting with Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi in China in November, which raises the possibility of a historic four-way summit if Mr. Kim joins.)
在俄罗斯总统普京2022年下令全面入侵乌克兰两年后，金正恩与俄罗斯签署了共同防御条约。朝鲜军队一直与俄军并肩作战，对抗乌克兰军队。金正恩和普京也曾分别访问对方国家并举行了会晤。（普京的一名高级助手本月表示，这位俄罗斯领导人可能会于11月在中国参加一场有特朗普和习近平出席的多方会晤。如果金正恩也参加，就有可能出现一次历史性的四方峰会。）
North Korea has shown no signs of a softening toward the United States, despite Mr. Trump’s decision to curtail U.S. military exercises with South Korea.
尽管特朗普决定缩减美韩军事演习规模，朝鲜却没有表现出任何缓和对美态度的迹象。
A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said recent U.S. statements and military actions showed that the United States had “fully reconfirmed its invariable hostile policy to wantonly violate the sovereignty, political system and security interests of the D.P.R.K.,” according to a report in late August by the Korean Central News Agency, an official outlet. (The formal name of North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.)
据朝鲜官方媒体朝中社8月底的一篇报道，朝鲜外务省一名发言人表示，美国最近的言论和军事行动表明，它“再次充分暴露了其肆意侵犯朝鲜民主主义人民共和国主权、政治制度和安全利益的一贯反朝政策”。
The report also made clear that talks about the denuclearization of North Korea would lead nowhere.
该报道还明确表示，任何有关朝鲜无核化的谈判都不会有结果。
North Korea, the spokesperson said, “can neither be weakened nor be diluted by the U.S. repeated expression of its stand on ‘denuclearization.’” The United States must not “absurdly stick to the past.”
这名发言人说，朝鲜（拥核地位）“既不会因美国反复表明‘无核化’立场而被削弱，也不会被淡化”。美国不应“荒谬地固守过去”。
Robert Carlin, a former U.S. intelligence analyst on North Korea, said Mr. Kim had maintained a policy change he enacted in 2021, two years after the Hanoi summit ended in disappointment for the two leaders.
美国前朝鲜问题情报分析员罗伯特·卡林说，金正恩一直坚持他在2021年作出的政策转变。那是在河内峰会令两位领导人失望而归两年之后。
“I think what people have to understand is there has been a tectonic shift in North Korean strategic perceptions and policy,” Mr. Carlin said. “They wouldn’t try to normalize relations with the U.S. And on top of that, there’s an even broader reality. Kim sees the world completely differently now. He sees himself as a leader of the anti-imperialist forces globally.”
“我认为，人们必须明白，朝鲜的战略认知和政策已经发生了结构性转变，”卡林说。“他们不会试图实现与美国关系正常化。除此之外，还有一个更广泛的现实。金正恩现在看待世界的方式已经完全不同。他把自己视为全球反帝力量的领导人。”
Mr. Carlin added that Mr. Kim believes “that a confrontation with the U.S. is inevitable.” Mr. Trump’s war against Iran bolsters that notion, he said.
卡林补充道，金正恩认为“与美国发生对抗不可避免”。他说，特朗普对伊朗的战争强化了这一看法。
Decades of American policy on North Korea, including harsh economic sanctions, have failed to deter the advancement of the country’s nuclear weapons program. So leader-to-leader diplomacy is still worth a shot, some analysts say.
美国几十年来针对朝鲜采取的政策，包括严厉的经济制裁，都未能阻止朝鲜推进核武器计划。因此，一些分析人士认为，领导人之间的外交仍然值得一试。
“Any morsel of a response at all is good, especially if it leads to a conversation with the United States,” said Jung Pak, a former State Department official and C.I.A. analyst on North Korea.
“只要能得到哪怕一点点回应都是好事，尤其是如果这种回应能够促成与美国的对话，”美国国务院前官员、中央情报局前朝鲜问题分析员朴郑（音）说。
However, Ms. Pak faulted Mr. Trump for surprising South Korea with his announcement about rolling back military exercises.
不过，朴郑批评特朗普在宣布缩减军事演习规模一事上没有事先告知韩国，令韩国措手不及。
“The way it was executed by the Trump administration is not great,” she said. “It made it look as if the alliance is not on an equal footing. The first rule is you make sure your best partner knows about what you’re doing.”
“特朗普政府处理这件事的方式不太好，”她说。“这让人觉得这个同盟并不是建立在平等地位上的。最起码，你得确保自己最重要的伙伴知道你在做什么。”