Yes, a Deal with North Korea Is Still Possible This Year Diplomatic give-and-take is the only way for the United States to constrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Here is what a deal could look like. by Leon V. Sigal

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, Kim Jong-un might say. The same could be said for nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

Why? Diplomatic give-and-take is the only way for the United States to constrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

It is also the only way for Kim Jong-un to realize his grandfather’s goal of reducing his country’s security and economic growth dependence. Kim Il Sung had played off the Soviets against China throughout the Cold War, but in 1988, anticipating the collapse of the Soviet Union, he reached out to the United States, South Korea, and Japan in an attempt to end enmity and hedge against a rising China.

There is evidence that the North was determined to reconcile. In 1991, before it had any nuclear weapons,  it stopped reprocessing to extract plutonium, the only way it then had to generate fissile material to make them, in an attempt to open talks with Washington. It signed the Agreed Framework in 1994, verifiably shutting down its plutonium program and did not reopen it until 2003. It agreed to shut down that program again in 2007 in six-party talks.

In 1997, however, when Washington was slow to “move toward full normalization of political and economic relations,” as it had pledged in the Agreed Framework, Pyongyang began acquiring the means to enrich uranium, another way to make fissile material but kept its plutonium program shuttered. It also balked at initially implementing the 2007 accord after Washington imposed sanctions designed to bar its access to international financial institutions, and resumed fissile material production when South Korea, with U.S. support, halted delivery of promised energy assistance.

In 2017, Kim Jong Un opened the way to the first-ever US-DPRK summit meeting by suspending tests of nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles – stopping short of developing a proven thermonuclear device and an ICBM equipped with a reentry vehicle.

President Trump never quite reciprocated. At that Singapore summit, he suspended joint military exercises with South Korea – only to resume them soon thereafter, albeit scaled back. 

So why have negotiations stalled? The trouble began with the February 2019 Hanoi summit when both parties overreached, demanding too much and offering too little in return.

In the run-up to Hanoi, secret talks began to sketch out a first-phase deal. The Trump administration proposed to exchange liaison offices as a step toward diplomatic normalization and approved some exemptions from U.N. sanctions. In pivotal talks with Kim Jong-un in October 2018, then-CIA Director Michael Pompeo committed to accepting an end-of-war declaration paving the way to a peace process in Korea. Kim, in response, offered “dismantlement and destruction of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium facilities ... and more,” according to U.S. negotiator Stephen Biegun.

On the eve of Hanoi, the North’s negotiators fell short of what Kim had offered and asked for substantial relief from U.N. sanctions. They opened the door for National Security Adviser John Bolton’s “Libya solution”: complete denuclearization as well as the elimination of the North’s chemical and biological weapons first, with “a very bright economic future” to follow. A North Korean attempt to clarify its stance on denuclearization failed to head off an abrupt U.S. departure from Hanoi

In the immediate aftermath. pushback came from those in Pyongyang opposed to engagement with Washington, leading Kim, in an April 12, 2019 speech, to harden his negotiating position and hint at ending his unilateral restraint on longer-range launches and nuclear tests, a step he has yet to take. While saying he was still open to negotiation, he raised the barrier to entry, demanding unilateral U.S. steps to reciprocate his test moratorium. He then presided over tests of short- and intermediate-range missiles.

In subsequent meetings in Panmunjom and Stockholm, the Trump administration offered more sanctions relief and refrained from large-scale or provocative exercises, but it did not allow North Korea exports of textiles and coal or suspend field exercises for a time or commit to what Pompeo once called “a fundamentally different strategic relationship” or security partnership.

These measures are a lot to ask, but if President Trump wants a significant foreign policy success, he may be prepared to offer them upfront, and Kim, if he does not want to abandon his grandfather’s goal of reconciliation, can put his test moratorium and his pledge to dismantle his plutonium and enrichment facilities in writing. 

Negotiations are dead! Long live negotiations!

Do Americans Even Care About North Korea?

"The reality is that North Korea just does not resonate in US domestic politics – not its gross human rights abuses (perhaps the worst in the world), not its nuclear program, and not the latent threat that Pyongyang poses to America’s allies and the tens of thousands of US troops based in Northeast." by Peter Harris

It is unlikely that any serious work will be done to improve US-North Korean relations during the remainder of this year. Having entertained grand hopes for resolving the North Korean nuclear dispute just a few years ago, President Trump must surely now have resigned himself to the fact that no breakthrough with Pyongyang will happen on his watch – at least not in the next six months. Even so, 2020 might yet offer some clues about how the future of this critical bilateral relationship will unfold, with North Korea’s treatment in the US presidential election being of particular importance. 

Foreign policy issues never dominate presidential elections. Domestic concerns – the economy, healthcare, and this year the coronavirus pandemic – tend to weigh most heavily in the minds of voters. Insofar as foreign policy intrudes upon electoral politics at all, it is usually so that candidates for office can emphasize certain traits to the voting public. This November, for example, Trump and Joe Biden can be expected to trade barbs over China policy as each man struggles to avoid the criticism of being “weak” on national security.

On its face, North Korea offers several opportunities for both Trump and Joe Biden to place themselves in a favorable light before domestic audiences. Trump could make hay from his diplomatic overtures towards Pyongyang, brandishing his anti-war credentials (such as they are) and styling himself as an earnest man of peace. For his part, Joe Biden could try – indeed, he has already tried – to paint Trump as a coddler of dictators, someone who has jettisoned American values and put US national security at stake. Both candidates could promise to bring a problem-solving mindset to the White House if they were to put forward a detailed plan for the next four years.

All of these are possible ways that North Korea might intrude upon the presidential election. But more likely, North Korea will remain a peripheral issue at best during the November campaign. If the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis allow any international issues to see the light of day, it will be China’s rise, Russia’s interference in US democracy, and America’s wars in the Middle East that are the subjects of debate.

The reality is that North Korea just does not resonate in US domestic politics – not its gross human rights abuses (perhaps the worst in the world), not its nuclear program, and not the latent threat that Pyongyang poses to America’s allies and the tens of thousands of US troops based in Northeast Asia. Even if most Americans say that North Korea poses a critical threat to US national security, there is no groundswell of support for action against Pyongyang; and no political leader has managed to mobilize public opinion on North Korea into a force at the ballot box.

At the end of his eight years in office, President Obama called the North Korean nuclear issue America’s “most urgent problem.” But most Americans see things differently. They can (and do) tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea, and they will not (and do not) punish their leaders for letting this happen. They would surely balk at the normalization of relations with North Korea, but they also want to avoid a worsening of the security situation. In short, Americans can live with the status quo.

This is probably what we will see confirmed during the presidential election and beyond. No candidate will derive any political advantage for proposing radical solutions towards North Korea. They will, instead, be on the safest available ground when hewing to a policy of “muddling through.” In the end, this is what should be expected from both Trump and Biden.