In Asia, Mattis to face allies seeking answers on North Korea
SINGAPORE (AP) — 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 chaotic fits and starts of American and North Korean diplomacy.
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 onagain, off-again summit confusion say about the stability of broader U.S. policy-making? And, is it all just doomed to fail?
At this point, the visiting Americans may have very few answers as high-level diplomacy plays out back at home.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim 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, or DMZ.
Another team is meeting in Singapore to go over logistics for the summit, which would take place there.
And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was meeting Thursday with an aide to leader Kim Jong Un in New York, who could travel to Washington on Friday.
The message to North Korea, said Asia experts and former U.S. defense and diplomatic officials, is that the United States is interested in negotiations, but also is not afraid to walk away.
But to other nations it may appear confusing and cobbled together with no clear plan of engagement.
And Terry said Mattis will have to calm South Korean and Japanese allies impacted by Trump’s rapid-fire decision-making.
Mattis and others, said Terry, will need to pick up the pieces and do a lot of “alliance management.”