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How Trump Can Separate North Korea From Its Nukes
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Photo:
iStock/narvikk
President Donald
Trump has agreed to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, but
the Pentagon just announced it would restart military drills with South
Korea—a good cop, bad cop approach apparently intended to keep the
pressure on ahead of talks.
Joseph DeTrani,
former
Special Envoy for negotiations with North Korea, shares what
advice he would offer the president, from his interactions with North
Korean officials:
- “During two years of intense
negotiations with North Korea, from August 2003 to
September 2005, North Korea’s constant refrain to U.S. negotiators
was, ‘Accept us as a nuclear weapons state and we’ll be a good
friend of the U.S.’… Kim Jong Un would establish his legacy if he
could normalize relations with the U.S.”
- “If
Kim Jong Un is convinced that this would never happen, then Kim may
revert to plan B: Get the U.S. to agree to a cap on the number
of nuclear weapons the North can retain, promising not to
manufacture any additional fissile material or weapons. Kim may
think that plan B is attainable, with time and perseverance.”
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Pakistan Is Feeling US Pressure. Now What?
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The Trump
administration has ratcheted up the pressure on Pakistan to crack down on
terrorist groups within its borders—and according to Johns Hopkins SAIS’s
Dan Markey, a Cipher Brief expert who just returned from Pakistan.
He believes the approach may be working…or at least, beginning to work.
Markey, who just
returned from a trip to Pakistan last week, explains what
the administration is doing differently—and how the Pakistanis seem to be
reacting:
- “For
a Trump administration that is too often adrift, divided, or inept,
this coercive effort should be appreciated as a rare foreign policy
achievement….
As compared to previous administrations, the Trump team has also
been crystal clear about its demands.”
- “In
sum, we are now witnessing the latter stages of an opening bid in a
coercive negotiation with Pakistan. Washington made its move.
So the question is—what happens next?”
- “We
should rule out the possibility that Pakistan will acquiesce fully to U.S. demands and take
an about-face on the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba...A grand
‘strategic shift’ by Pakistan – the complete renunciation of proxy
fighters that have been Islamabad’s preferred tools for projecting
influence in the region for decades – is not in the cards, not now,
and perhaps not ever.”
Read Markey’s column
on how Pakistan is responding to increased (and perhaps more focused)
U.S. pressure.
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Opinion: MBS, Bring Back America!
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Saudi Arabia’s
reformist Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS,
just met with the American president—and is off to tour the country for
the next two weeks, meeting with a variety of stakeholders and leaders
across the country.
His mission goes
beyond wooing D.C. decision-makers; it’s to restore
positive relations between the Saudi and American peoples, writes Abdulateef Al-Mulhim,
a retired Commodore of the Royal Saudi Navy, offering view from inside
the Kingdom:
- “In short, the Americans
didn’t only teach Saudis how to drill for oil, but also introduced them
to the cheeseburger and the apple pie…every family in Saudi Arabia –
I mean literally every family in Saudi Arabia –have or had a son or
a daughter who is educated in the United States.”
- “But two issues have
continued to sour U.S.-Saudi relations: the Palestinian problem
and the 9/11 terrorist attack.”
- “Crown
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is trying to mend that, and bring the two peoples
back together. His ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 includes a plan to
welcome more American investment in the Kingdom – to echo the
partnership of 80 years ago, when an American company discovered oil
and helped turn Saudi Arabia into the number one economic power in
the Middle East.”
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