Tag: denuclearization

Long time Korea analyst Victor Cha is making some bold predictions:

But there is bigger storm brewing behind these dark clouds that is threatening to the core of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. It has three components. The first is a nuclear deal with North Korea that is almost certain before Christmas now that John Bolton, the most influential voice in the Hanoi summit’s collapse, is out of the White House. This deal will probably not be a good one, in that its scope will be limited mostly to the Yongbyon nuclear facility; it will not be verifiable; and the U.S. will give too much in lifting sanctions. 

But both presidents Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump, who have both staked so much of their credibility on a deal with Kim, will not just accept a suboptimal deal, but will declare with it an end to hostilities on the Korean Peninsula in the form of a peace declaration. (……)

The perfect storm in the winter of 2019-2020, therefore, is a peace deal with North Korea and a failed cost-sharing negotiation that causes Trump to act on his beliefs. Specifically, his anger over Seoul’s refusal to pay no more than a fraction of the demand, coupled with an end-of-war declaration, will cause Trump to act on his 30-year long instinct to draw down or fully withdraw forces from South Korea. As ludicrous as this scenario may sound to experts, Trump would boast that the deal with North Korea is the “best deal ever” with his good friend Kim Jong-un; that he has ended the Korean War; and that he can now “bring the boys home” because there is peace in South Korea and the “ungrateful” South Koreans do not want to pay for U.S. troops. Moreover, he will tell his political base during the campaign that this move is saving money wasted on foreigners and therefore he is putting “America first.”

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Well I guess if you can’t get North Korea to denuclearize you can just change the definition to make it look like they are denuclearizing:

The United States and North Korea are in talks to agree on a “mutually-acceptable” definition for “denuclearization,” South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said Monday (KST) in a briefing at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel. 

“Since the breakdown in Hanoi, yes, there has been a lot of discussion between Washington and Pyongyang over the issue of the desired end state for denuclearization, and the clarification of actual denuclearization. Lots of interpretations have been used regarding denuclearization as there are different definitions. The upcoming working-level discussions between Washington and Pyongyang will look into that issue, seriously and thoroughly, to gain a clear concept of the term,” the foreign minister said responding to a question from The Korea Times.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this is all leading to what I call “pretend denuclearization“.

Here is the latest on the possible restart of talks with North Korea:

Earlier Wednesday, Bolton told a private lunch group that any negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang are “doomed to failure,” U.S. media reported. Bolton said the lifting of sanctions is North Korea’s only goal. 

In response, Trump stressed that his administration has successfully stopped North Korean nuclear tests and that he has a good relationship with its leader. 

“So I think that’s better than somebody that goes around saying we want to use the Libyan model,” Trump said. “He said the ‘Libyan model.’ That set us back very badly when he said that. So I think John really should take a look at how badly they’ve done in the past, and maybe a new method would be very good.”

Kim Myong-gil, a former North Korean ambassador to Vietnam, in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency Friday “welcomed” President Trump’s “wise political determination” calling for a new method of negotiations. 

Kim, now confirmed as the North’s counterpart to U.S. top nuclear envoy Stephen Biegun, lauded Trump’s criticism of the Libyan model and said he wants to be “optimistic” about the results of North-U.S. negotiations expected to “take place soon.”

North Korea said Monday it wants to meet with the United States in late September, but no meeting has been set. Urging the United States to come up with a “new calculation method,” the North has demanded that economic sanctions be lifted and security guarantees for its regime be offered. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but my reading of the tea leaves is that a deal of some kind will be worked out with North Korea. I think President Trump realizes they are not giving up their nukes and it appears a “pretend denuclearization” deal may be what is ultimately worked out.

If this report is true it will allow the Kim regime to increase its foreign revenue for giving up nothing in return:

In return for the dismantlement of the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Reactor and a nuclear freeze, the United States would offer the Kim regime a 12-18 month suspension on some U.N. Security Council sanctions. The North Koreans would again be permitted to export coal and textiles, two commodities which have served as Kim’s biggest moneymakers. If Pyongyang agrees to keep its end of the deal, Washington would also consider an end of war declaration and the establishment of liaison offices in one another’s capitals. And if the North cheats or violates the agreement, the Security Council would reimpose the sanctions through a snap-back mechanism.

National Interest

You can read more at the link.

Retired Admiral James Stavridis has an opinion piece published in Bloomberg on how he believes North Korea’s denuclearization should be pursued:

While the ultimate shape of what might be termed “denuclearization lite” remains unclear, one can envision the general outline. For starters, the U.S. would likely demand a full, verifiable accounting of North Korea’s active nuclear and missile programs, with specific geographic positions identified. The U.S. could also push for a reduction in the total stockpile to a number that international inspectors could keep under permanent observation, say 50 warheads of a specified level of kilotons each. The warheads would be held in a small number of locations, three or so, each with a technical oversight system (cameras, electronic monitors) to alert inspectors if the facilities were breached. There could be a similar plan for the launcher systems, but they would be based different parts of the country than the warheads. All of this would be verified by international teams, which would have a mandate to inspect the facilities at any time.

In exchange, the North would receive sanctions relief and a large amount of development aid, although perhaps not of the kind Trump famously proposed for North Korea’s beaches in his first meeting with Kim: “Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?”

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link, but the international community could not get proper inspections of North Korean food aid, what makes anyone think the Kim regime will allow unannounced inspections of their nuclear weapons?

We have seen this movie before. It appears that North Korea is heading towards another deal where some sanctions are dropped in return for mostly future promises from the Kim regime to denuclearize. They will behave for a while and then once their cash reserves are restocked they will break the deal at a time of their choosing and blame the U.S. for its breakdown. Another provocation cycle will begin with more calls for talks and eventually another deal will be reached.

All the journalists and think tank types can then recycle all their old articles and opinion pieces. The only wild card with this issue is President Trump. Is he willing to watch this same old movie play out?

The question becomes what is the Trump administration going to give up in return for a freeze deal?:

The United States would hope to see a freeze in the North Korean nuclear program as the start of a process of denuclearization, the State Department said on Tuesday, ahead of fresh talks with Pyongyang supposed to take place this month.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a surprise meeting at the end of June in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume a working-level dialogue, stalled since a failed summit in Vietnam in February.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the talks would likely happen “sometime in July … probably in the next two or three weeks.”

The Trump administration has dismissed a New York Times report that said an idea was taking shape among U.S. officials to seek to negotiate a nuclear freeze by North Korea, rather than its complete denuclearization, thereby tacitly accepting it as a nuclear state.

“(A) freeze, you know, that would never be the resolution of a process. That would never be the end of a process,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told a regular news briefing. “That would (be) something that we would certainly hope to see at the beginning. But I don’t think that the administration has ever characterized a freeze as being the end goal. That would be at the beginning of the process.”

Reuters

You can read more at the link, but if the Trump administration allows the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Kumgang Tours this would be a similar deal to what the Bush administration signed that the Kim regime later broke. However, that deal did cause North Korea to behave while the Bush administration was focused on the surge strategy in Iraq. The Trump administration could be thinking the same thing to get the Kim regime to behave during the upcoming reelection campaign and then get tough later on by pushing for real denuclearization.

If the Trump administration goes with the “small deal” approach with North Korea, they are essentially doing what has already been tried before and did not work:

An editorial published by the Washington Post has put forward the argument that a step-by-step “small deal” is the only diplomatic way forward with North Korea.

Columnist Josh Rogin said in an op-ed Thursday that the United States and North Korea are resuming negotiations in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s impromptu meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last weekend, and that a fight over North Korea policy has rekindled within the Trump administration.

He said, “What we’re seeing now is a return to the idea of a step-by-step approach known as the ‘small deal,’” which he called the only diplomatic path with any chance of success.

He asserted that the Trump administration, led on this issue by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and special representative Stephen Biegun, is now returning to an incremental and phased approach to persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. 

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link, but a small deal would politically get the Trump administration through the 2020 election cycle which is what I think the North Koreans are counting on. The longer they wait and the harder they negotiate up to the 2020 election cycle the better deal they will likely get. Their goal is to get sanctions relief and keep their nukes and the small deal allows them to do this.

If a small deal is signed it will likely be marketed as a “Big Deal” if it includes a path to full denuclearization of North Korea. This politically allows the Trump administration to claim they have achieved a deal to completely denuclearize North Korea as a foreign policy achievement during the 2020 election. However, as we have seen in the past it is likely that the Kim regime will tear up the agreement at a time of their choosing and blame the U.S. for the deal’s failure. By the time this happens their treasury will be flush with cash due to the easing of sanctions and maybe even get major political concessions such as a Korean War peace treaty and USFK troop reductions.

I guess we will see where this is headed to in the next few months.

Here we go again the with Moon administration pushing the Trump administration to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex an the Mt. Kumgang Tours before denuclearization takes place:

South Korea’s minister in charge of inter-Korean affairs said the government could consider resuming cross-border projects such as the Mount Geumgang tours and the Gaeseong industrial park before full-scale sanctions relief to facilitate the denuclearization process.

During an interview with Yonhap News Agency and six other global news agencies in Seoul on Wednesday, a reporter asked Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul whether the inter-Korean economic projects could restart before Pyongyang’s complete denuclearization.

Kim said the two projects could resume following sanctions relief or be considered in the early stages of sanctions relief as an exceptional step to faciliate denuclearization.

The remarks come after President Moon Jae-in, in a written interview with the seven news agencies, said he suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump fully utilize inter-Korean economic cooperation as corresponding measures to induce the North’s denuclearization.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link, but we have been down this road before. President Bush agreed to a deal with the North Koreans that left the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mt. Kumgang Tours cash cows open and the North Koreans did not denuclearize. They blew up an old nuclear cooling tower for the cameras which I am sure Kim Jong-un is willing to do again for the same deal.

It can be argued that all the Bush deal did was increase funding for the regime to further develop their nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Does the Trump administration want to be ones that allows the Kim regime to complete the development of their nuclear weapons program?

What the US negotiators have to be careful of is the Kim regime promising to dismantle their nuclear facilities in exchange for dropping sanctions. After sanctions are dropped they can slow roll the dismantlement and then blame the U.S. for some made up reason for why they suddenly have to keep their nuclear capacity. They of course will keep all the hard currency they accumulated after the dropping of sanctions:

President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday that if North Korea dismantled its Yongbyon nuclear complex, the country’s denuclearization would be in an “irreversible stage.”

“If all of the nuclear facilities in the complex, including the plutonium reprocessing facilities and the uranium enrichment facilities, are completely demolished and verified,” Moon said in a written interview with seven global news agencies including Yonhap, “it would be possible to say that the denuclearization of North Korea has entered an irreversible stage.” 

During his second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Feb. 27 and 28, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered to dismantle at least some of the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which includes a 5-megawatt plutonium production reactor.

Trump said Pyongyang had to do more for sanctions relief. That summit collapsed without a deal and led to an impasse in denuclearization dialogue ever since. 

Yet the United States is engaged in “behind-the-scenes talks” with North Korea for a possible third summit, Moon said in the interview, noting that “there will be substantive progress if the two sides continue negotiations based on what was discussed in Singapore and Hanoi.” Kim and Trump’s first summit was in Singapore on June 12 of last year.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It looks like President Trump is continuing the messaging that he is open to talks on North Korea’s denuclearization while simultaneously increasing sanctions to further pressure the Kim regime:

President Donald Trump will make a two-day visit to South Korea this weekend, officials said Monday, as the U.S. administration said it’s ready to resume nuclear talks with the North “at a moment’s notice.”

Trump’s visit, which will be his second trip to the divided peninsula as president, comes amid new optimism for the stalled diplomatic push to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.

The president sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that was welcomed by the communist state, raising hopes for efforts to break the deadlock that followed the February summit between the two men, which ended without agreement in Vietnam.

“I can confirm that that letter was, in fact, sent,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday. “And I am hopeful that this will provide a good foundation for us to begin to continue the important discussions with the North Koreans to denuclearize the peninsula.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.