Robert Gallucci the former nuclear negotiator with North Korea during the Clinton administration recently sat down and conducted an interview with the Joong Ang Ilbo about the upcoming Trump-Kim summit. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Former diplomat Robert Gallucci, chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, sits for an interview at the university in Washington on March 8. [LEE GWANG-JO]Q. Do you think a “one-shot” negotiation is possible between Trump and Kim Jong-un at the first U.S.-North Korea summit?
A. First of all, it never occurred to me that this would be a one-shot negotiation. It is hard for me to believe that anybody familiar with the complexity of the issues would think that anybody — and I do mean anybody — could sit down at a negotiation and work out all the differences between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States in one session. It is, for me, inconceivable. If you accept that, that means that if this is going to be a successful engagement, the summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump will be the start of a series of talks which will be top-down, because you can’t go higher up. So that means that there would be presumably professional diplomats or at least representatives of both governments who would then meet someplace or at an extended period of time, back and forth, to work out the details of an agreement. I cannot see a single session solving this problem.
What issue will be most hotly contested at the U.S.-North Korea summit?
If I look back to 1994 and to the 2000s, transparency, verification, monitoring, that’s always a difficult matter in the negotiation where we are looking to limit capability on both nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. I imagine what’s in the mind of the American side is that they would want to reach an agreement in which the North Koreans commit to giving up their nuclear weapons program, that they want a nuclear weapons-free peninsula. So you can imagine North Koreans saying, “Sure. It’s done. We dismantled all our nuclear weapons yesterday. Everything’s done. Now, here’s what we would like.”
We might say, “We think the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) needs to get back in and do what it considers a full scope of safeguards.” North Koreans might hop on, maybe not. So what I’m saying here, you want to know where I see the greatest sensitivity will be, it will be on gaining agreement by the North Koreans to adequate measures to permit transparency, to permit monitoring of the agreement and ultimate verification of compliance with the agreement. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but let me remind everyone that Mr. Gallucci is the guy a few months ago that said even a deal North Korea cheats on is still a good deal. I have so far seen no indications that the Trump administration is ready to sign up for any deal that allows North Korea to cheat.
No deal is better than a bad deal.