Plans for U.S.-North Korea Summit Revived, But Prospects for Talks Remain Uncertain

Tim Shorrock, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and author

Earlier in May, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced that they had scheduled a first-ever summit meeting between a U.S. and North Korean head of state on June 12 in Singapore.

Then, after a North Korean official strongly objected to U.S. South Korean military exercises and Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton made implicit threats against the North, Trump cancelled the Summit on May 24.
 
But just two days later, South Korean President Moon Jae-In traveled to the Demilitarized Zone for a hastily arranged meeting with Kim to salvage the cancelled U.S. summit. Now it appears that the historic Singapore meeting is back on track. On May 29, Trump announced that a top North Korean official would travel to New York City to meet Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
 
Many Korea observers believe that despite Trump’s erratic approach to these negotiations, South and North Korea are committed to signing a peace deal, which could weaken the U.S.-South Korea alliance.  Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Tim Shorrock, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who spent part of his youth living in South Korea. Here, he assesses the uncertainty of achieving an agreement to denuclearize the Korea peninsula, given Donald Trump’s unpredictability and recent decision to violate terms of the U.S. nuclear agreement with Iran.
TIM SHORROCK: John Bolton, the national security advisor, has pressing in public this idea of “a Libya solution” to the North Korean denuclearization. And by that he means two things. Like, one, back in the day, Libya under (Moammar) Qaddafi gave up their nuclear weapons, but only after they gave them up that they get any kind of rewards or any kind of incentives. It was they had to give them up first and they had to surrender their weapons first before any deal was made. That was part one. But then as we know, a few years later, after he got rid of his weapons, the U.S. and NATO got rid of Qaddafi and then a regime change. And so “a Libya” means something that North Korea does not have any interest in that kind of solution. And so when Bolton started saying this and then (Vice President Mike) Pence was backing up Bolton and Pence was saying, you know, if the North Koreans don’t agree to a solution, then we may have to resort to the kind of Libya solution – meaning, you know, a regime change and this really angered them.

And so they put out a very strong statement that was very critical of Pence. And that’s apparently what sparked Trump to decide to cancel the meeting. And, you know, he wrote this letter saying, I’m sorry, but we’re not going to meet under these circumstances with people saying these kinds of things. The next day, another senior official in North Korea put out a statement saying, well actually, you know, we want to make sure we talk and we want these talks to go on. And then within 24 hours, he had met with the president of South Korea and they had kind of gotten the talks back on track. And then the last couple days there’s been a delegation from the U.S., from the White House and from the National Security Council has been been actually meeting with North Korean officials in North Korea to talk about the summit, so it seems to be happening. Trump and the White House to realize you’re not going to just go in there and demand North Korea surrender before anything happens. It’s got to be a kind of step-by-step process to build the peace so they feel that they can give up their weapons and you know, give up their nuclear program and have some guarantees for their security and not be attacked by the United States. So I think that’s the kind of deal that shaping up.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Tim Shorrock, if talks proceed in Singapore as now planned, what if anything can be accomplished given the fact there’s been not all that much preparation in terms of laying the groundwork for some breakthrough agreement. And on the other hand, what are some of your concerns about a worst case scenario – that the talks fail, tensions increase and threats rebound?

I think the chances of the latter is much less now. I mean, I think what’s happened in the last few days, it’s been sort of like laying down the law, kind of laying down what one side is willing to negotiate about what the other side is willing to negotiate about. I think that kind of clears the air. I’m not sure if it’s going to fail in that way. It really appears to me like the Koreas certainly want this to happen and we’re seeing making these kinds of commitments that an agreement can be signed.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Tim, given the fact that Donald Trump is well known for breaking treaties, I mean he’s on record now, of course, for violating the Iran international nuclear agreement. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords. He’s in the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. He’s a guy who seems to not be that reliable of a partner for a country like North Korea, that is primarily interested in perpetuating the family dynasty. If they look at Trump’s history here, his adherence to treaties that have been signed by the United States, it seems as though Kim Jong Un would have to be throwing the dice here to give away all his nuclear weapons and trust that the U.S. will hold up its end of the bargain.

Well, certainly the pulling the rug out from the Iran agreement that was signed by European countries and China raises a lot of issues as far as an agreement with North Korea and the U.S. keeping its word. I mean, how can you break one treaty and then try to enter another one? A lot of people have pointed to that kind of discrepancy in Trump’s policies. What they seem to say is that this agreement with North Korea is going to be very different than the Iran agreement and it’s gonna have the kind of safeguards that they think that weren’t in the Iran agreement, which were clearly in the Iran agreement. But we don’t want to get too much into that. I mean, I just think that it’s a crap shoot, you know. But I think that (South Korean President) Moon Jae-in I think was himself, was convinced that with Trump’s interest in doing this, this was the chance in North Koreans should take him up on this because it’s sorta like, you know, Nixon in China, right? If Trump, you know, can cut this deal with North Korea, with such a kind of right-wing stance on foreign policy that he and his White House have. Then, if they can actually get an agreement like that through and have that be supported by U.S. Congress and the U.S. people, then go for it. North Koreans might see it a little bit differently than we know. They see it as a chance to grab onto because here’s a guy who’s willing to do business with them and is willing negotiate, is willing to cut a deal with them. And that’s very different than than the past.

Tim Shorrock is author of the book, “Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.”For more information, visit Tim Shorrock’s Nation magazine page at thenation.com/authors/tim-shorrock and Tim Shorrock’s web site at
timshorrock.com.

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