Why North Korean nukes
are still on the table
After a flurry of
diplomatic action a little earlier this year, the issue of North Korea and
its nuclear weapons was largely relegated to the background in recent weeks.
But that isn’t likely to last much longer.
On Monday, the two Koreas announced
that their leaders, Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in, will meet next month. It
will be the third meeting between the two men, and it should come amid a
busy month of diplomatic events.
North Korea is planning to host a
birthday celebration on Sept. 9, the 70th anniversary of the founding of
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which Chinese President Xi Jinping
might attend. Two days later, Russia will host the Eastern Economic Forum
in the nearby city of Vladivostok — possible attendees include Russian
President Vladimir Putin, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and, potentially, Kim.
Then there’s the opening of the
U.N. General Assembly in New York the following week. Many have speculated
that Kim could make an appearance.
Will all this diplomatic action
change anything? Perhaps — but don’t hold your breath.
After all, the core of ongoing
U.S.-North Korea negotiations is not meetings but denuclearization, and
there has been little progress on that front since President Trump met Kim
in Singapore on June 12. Even Trump administration staffers now acknowledge
things are going too slowly: National security adviser John Bolton said last week that
“North Korea that has not taken the steps we feel are necessary to
denuclearize.”
North Korea has taken some small
conciliatory steps, including the apparent dismantling of a
satellite-launch site last month. But those acts have been of questionable
value to North Korea’s weapons program. And they took place without outside experts
present.
None of this is surprising. The
joint statement Trump and Kim released in Singapore had little detail, with
North Korea only vaguely agreeing to work
“toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The details of
private negotiations may be less reassuring still: According to Vox’s Alex
Ward, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked Pyongyang to unilaterally give
up between 60 percent and 70 percent of
its nuclear weapons — a demand that is short of full denuclearization
and still clearly unacceptable to North Korea.
Given the circumstances, some
analysts now argue that getting North Korea to surrender its nuclear
weapons is simply impossible. As North Korea watcher Andrei Lankov recently
quoted an unnamed contact in Washington as saying, “The North
Koreans have quietly succeeded in changing the general paradigm of
negotiations: While, on paper, negotiations are still about the
denuclearization, in practice, talks are now about arms control.”
Meetings between Kim and various
world leaders are unlikely to have any effect, either. South Korea’s Moon
may have Kim’s ear on some matters, but he has little sway on nuclear
issues. Officials in Seoul have made clear they don’t see nuclear weapons
as part of their remit; they are focused on economic cooperation with North
Korea and finally achieving a formal end to the Korean War.
Elsewhere, Japan’s Abe has no
leverage over Kim. Putin and Xi may have more clout, but they are not as
worried about a nuclear North Korea — and, given the state of their own
relations with Washington, they have good reason to undermine Trump’s
“maximum pressure” sanctions policy.
Even another Trump-Kim summit
probably wouldn’t bring immediate progress. North Korea has skillfully
driven a wedge between Trump and his administration, wooing the president
with grand gestures while criticizing officials such as Pompeo who must
work out the details.
And by meeting Kim again, Trump
would probably be handing him a lasting victory. “If Trump meets Kim again
without first securing tangible progress on denuclearization, then he
effectively will be recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state,” wrote Ryan Hass, a former
U.S. diplomat and current fellow at the Brookings Institution.
For all of this, the goal of a
nuclear-free North Korea is not completely dead, but it will certainly
require some resuscitation.
To do that, U.S. negotiators will
need patience. After Pompeo visited Pyongyang last month, North Korea’s
Foreign Ministry released a statement suggesting that it sees the ongoing
talks with the United States as a step-by-step process, with actual denuclearization coming only
at the end.
The question now is finding the
right step to take next. In Foreign Affairs, Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang suggested the United
States should push North Korea to disclose the full extent of its nuclear
weapons, its ballistic missiles and the facilities associated them, then
work toward a cap on production.
Meanwhile, the head of a body that
oversees a global ban on nuclear testing has called on Pyongyang to let his
inspectors in. “Verification is what brings trust,” Lassina Zerbo, of the
Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization, said to the Wall Street Journal.
In exchange for such gestures, the
United States might offer some sanctions relief for North Korea. That move
would be especially welcome in South Korea, where many are growing angry
about the restrictions blocking further inter-Korean economic cooperation.
Such ideas are tough sell for an
administration that has already celebrated North Korean denuclearization as
a fait accompli — and for which sanctions are an increasingly common
foreign-policy bludgeon. But for now, easy options — or even good ones —
seem hard to come by.
|
