In this Jan. 19, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump speak to reporters before leaving the White House in Washington. A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit against President Trump by porn actress Stormy Daniels that sought to tear up a hush-money settlement about their alleged affair but a bigger storm is brewing with the completion of the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into his potential collusion with Russians in the 2016 presidential election. Then, his foreign policy, resting heavily on the resolution of North Korea's denuclearization, would likely get unhinged. AP-Yonhap

By Oh Young-jin

U.S. President Donald Trump could have pulled it off, cutting the Gordian knot on the North Korean nuclear conundrum once and for all. But such a dramatic Trumpian resolution appears no viable prospect after his no-deal Hanoi, Vietnam, summit with North Korea's young dictator Kim Jong-un.

Now the vicious cycle appears to be restarting and with a vengeance ― the fear is that this time there may be no turning back. The result could be worse than what Trump critics have called for.

The Trump solution could go for an early deal, which would grind the North's nuclear program to a halt and get it going in reverse. His solution would reduce the chance of the North's implosion because Pyongyang would be able to open up for goods from and exchanges with the outside world, significantly easing its economy from the dire straits it has been in.

The chance of explosion ― acting out to the outside with its nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction ― would also go down amid the friendly atmosphere.

Then, in the Trumpian wisdom lies the possibility that the Kim regime would sink or swim in the brave new world it's jumping into. Thus, the time bomb of the North that has been ticking and stopping for the past seven decades would disarm itself.

Trump would make good on his promise to put the North Korean nuclear issue "front and center" in his foreign affairs agenda, resolving one of the most dangerous challenges to the world in general and Koreans in particular.

It could be the best "transactional" achievement for the man who takes pride in being the artist of the deal.

But the Hanoi summit dissolved much of the Trump charm.

Media outlets are generating their versions of what happened ― ranging from Trump's sudden inexplicable change of heart to Kim Jong-un's complacency, their unconventional "top-down" negotiating pattern to the participation of National Security Advisor John Bolton, a relic from the George W. Bush era and believer in Francis Fukuyama's end of history.

Whatever the real reason, Trump has been overtaken and bogged down by the Washington bureaucracy, to which the small community of North Korea experts belongs to.

Quite possibly, Trump has been tamed to follow the old playbook written and revised by Washington's North Korea hands.

N. Korea denuclearization still achievable in Trump first term: US official