The ‘Talks’ Trap
. . . and what Obama’s Iran deal wrought
AFTER mocking “short and fat” North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and later warning that a “major, major” conflict could be imminent, on Thursday evening President Trump did an about-face: He accepted a surprise invitation to meet the communist regime’s reclusive leader within months to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
“Great progress being made,” Trump tweeted.
Where Trump sees hope, Kim Jong-un sees naiveté. Every North Korean leader has dangled a summit before an ambitious president. Shortly after Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, for example, Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea’s reclusive communist dynasty, offered Carter a peace treaty to end the Korean conflict.
Carter was interested. He believed himself a sophisticated and able statesman and, like many politicians, believed that the failures for diplomacy laid more with his predecessors than with adversaries.
Even his most dovish aides, however, recognized North Korea’s insincerity: The Dear Leader wanted America to step away from Korea so that it might have a free hand to extend its terror to the South.
North Korea tried again with Bill Clinton. In August 2000, Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, invited Clinton to visit Pyongyang. Just as his son does today, Kim Jong-il offered to resolve all outstanding security concerns.
Clinton sent Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang to assess the proposal. While Clinton liked what he heard, Albright’s visit should have been a wake-up call: Albright attended a stadium performance with Kim Jong-il featuring a depiction of a Taepodong missile launch.
Albright laughed it off. She praised the North Korean leader for his “exceptional hospitality,” and dismissed the bellicose theme: “He immediately turned to me and quipped that this was the first satellite launch and it would be the last,” she related.
Joseph Biden, then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was ecstatic. “The results of this comprehensive and integrated engagement strategy have stunned even the most optimistic observers,” he declared.
If only that were true: North Korean cheating reached new levels. While North Korea briefly suspended missile tests, its missile development continued apace. And, as Kim Jong-il courted Clinton, North Korean authorities decided to pursue a fullscale, covert uranium-enrichment capability.
Will Trump make the third time a charm? The dangers are huge.
Assume for a second that Kim Jong-un isn’t using the prospect of talks to buy time while he miniaturizes warheads and bolsters missile range. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal — however ironically made any hope that North Korea would forfeit its illicit nuclear program impossible.
The JCPOA reversed decades of precedent. Whereas South Africa and Libya completely surrendered their military nuclear infrastructures, Obama conceded that Iran could keep its underground nuclear facility and more centrifuges than Pakistan had when it built its nuclear arsenal.
The North Korean dictator certainly also wants to relieve economic pressure. Cash at best buys patronage to reinforce his rule and at worst funds terrorism across the region.
Alas, again the real costs of the JCPOA will soon become apparent. Because Iran received sanctions relief, new investment and hostage ransoms together worth upwards of $100 billion, that’s the new counter-proliferation baseline, and it’s more an expensive mirage than effective reality.
It is possible that Trump could hit it off with the North Korean leader. But both Trump and Kim Jong-un are mercurial. It is one thing to trade insults by Twitter; it’s another to do so in person.
Consider previous nuclear diplomacy: Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev were able to negotiate an end to the Cold War because they grew to genuinely like and respect each other.
Two decades later, relations faltered as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interactions degenerated into open animosity; today, Putin threatens to nuke the United States.
So what does this mean for Trump and Kim Jong-un?
Trump may picture himself a master negotiator, but off-thecuff proposals from a candidate who did not understand the nuclear triad and continues to disdain details can mean strategic disaster for the United States and its allies.
Sometimes, sophisticated diplomacy requires not engagement but rebuff.