In Asia, Mattis to face allies seeking answers

SINGAPORE — As international defense chiefs gather at a conference in Singapore this week, U.S. officials will face a barrage of questions from allies struggling to unravel the fits and starts of American and North Korean diplomacy.

Among the questions the officials will attempt to answer: Will there actually be a summit? Is North Korea really willing to give up its nuclear program? Will America pull troops out of South Korea? What does the on-again, off-again summit confusion say about the stability of broader U.S. policy-making? And, is it all just doomed to fail?

Speaking to reporters traveling with him to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis batted away questions about the North Koreans and the summit.

State Department diplomats are handling it, he said, suggesting they would be able to answer questions better than “those of us on the outside of that.”

But his message behind the scenes to counterparts from across the Asia-Pacific region may be more expansive.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of back-channel diplomacy and conversations going on,” said Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think it’s really hard to have a message. There are all kinds of mixed signals coming out.”

President Donald Trump, who unexpectedly agreed to the planned June 12 meeting then abruptly canceled it last week, has since signaled increasing optimism that the summit will go on.

This week, teams from the U.S. and North Korea are meeting in the Korean village of Panmunjom, which straddles the border inside the Demilitarized Zone. Another team is meeting in Singapore to go over logistics for the summit, which would take place there. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Thursday with an aide to leader Kim Jong Un in New York, who could travel to Washington today.

Mattis and others, said Terry, will need to pick up the pieces and do a lot of “alliance management.” Allies will need assurances that while the U.S. wants to work for peace on the divided Korean Peninsula, it also remains committed to militarily defending South Korea, Japan and others in the region if needed.

And the U.S. will need to calm broader worries from allies troubled about uncertainty and mixed messages coming from the administration and what that could mean for their own relations with America down the road.