Moon's role with Kim and Trump

By Stephen Costello

What seems to have happened last week is that the North Koreans were not as clear as they may have thought, and the South Koreans continued to misunderstand the game they are now playing. This is the big time. A lot is at stake. There is no room for fooling around. This is what it means to be “in the driver's seat.”

When looking at the extensive photo and video records of the North-South summit three weeks ago, it is clear the two delegations had a lot to say, and a lot to catch up on. In addition, we hope ― but don't know ― that the two discussed in some detail the very practical requirements from each side for continued successful engagement.

While Chairman Kim Jong-un reportedly said that the joint U.S.-ROK military exercises were not an immediate problem, he seems not to have been clear to President Moon Jae-in exactly what he expected regarding them in the coming months of increased diplomatic activity. This seems to have been a mistake. It is also surprising, since the DPRK delegation had in many cases 30 years of experience dealing with the South and the U.S.

President Moon has acted as if maximum pressure and sanctions were both necessary and appropriate to bring Kim back to negotiations. Some of this could be explained as his placation of Trump, which he has gone out of his way to do since being elected. We still don't know if he believes this idea, despite its being demonstrably not true, having contributed to 15 years of frozen diplomacy, and today poisonous to any new North-South or North-U.S. agreements.

This oversight by the Blue House is also surprising, because it has until now been so good at managing both the symbolism and optics of the North-South re-engagement, and the many details of the three-, four-, five- and six-way diplomacy surrounding the peninsula. However, of the two mistakes, this one is the most troubling.

Ever since the Panmunjeom Declaration there has been a growing imbalance, a lurking blow-up, or a creeping misunderstanding among the parties. Even some non-specialists became aware of this, but among long-time watchers there is no excuse for missing it.

One does not have to be Henry Kissinger to see that the North Koreans were making multiple moves to offer ― unilaterally ― various confidence-building measures (CBMs) in advance of the coming Kim-Trump meeting in Singapore on 12 June. This is what one does in this situation. You might call it “Diplomacy 101,” and the North ― with apparent backing from summits with Chinese and South Korean leaders, was playing its role.

One can sniff at any of these measures (the release of three American hostages, silence on the regular military exercises, meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State, announcements of closing a nuclear test site) and many did, but that's missing the point. They are each worth something, and they are payments, of whatever size, toward creating a mood and changing the previous disastrous dynamic. Helping to set the atmosphere, one might say.

At the same time, what has been coming from the Trump side has had a strange feeling. There has been verbal praise and fantastical suggestions of future riches for the North, accompanied by a steady stream of increasing demands and threats.

In contrast to Pyongyang's moves, U.S. moves are uncoordinated, contradictory, and amount to pocketing the CBMs from the North and then asking for more, while raising U.S. expectations to obviously impractical levels. Some in this group clearly oppose any agreement.

From this White House, such behavior is not surprising. One could have predicted a diplomatic and policy mess two months ago, and some of us did. The combination of an amateur at political leadership and foreign affairs, with the attention span of a hummingbird, largely surrounded by his own choice of fringe ideologues and opponents of diplomacy, was never going to work well.

The U.S. administration's behavior now is an attempt to prove the maximum pressure idea, together with a parallel point: that step-by-step and reciprocal actions won't work with the DPRK, and all must be done quickly and up front. This too is clearly not true. It is Trump personally who needs quick and dramatic results to offset or distract from his growing political and legal troubles. No one else does.

As the other leaders trying to make the Singapore meeting a success (Moon, Kim and Xi, as well as Putin, Abe, Gutierres and others) have watched and assessed Trump, all are trying to handle him, one way or another.

The challenge seems to be to provide the U.S. president with enough that is both visually and substantively stunning ― giving him a personal “win” ― while more serious and professional leaders, two of whom could be around for decades, arrange to make the meeting both successful and durable.

And despite much sniping from an army of newly minted Korea experts, there is almost no downside to the planned meeting. Trump will pursue his own interests, rather than those of the U.S., in the strategic and longer-term sense. This has terrified much of the Washington foreign policy establishment. That's understandable, but they need not worry in this case.

The problems at hand, and the solutions that may realistically emerge from bargaining among the parties, will almost invariably protect and advance U.S. deeper interests. That's because, regarding DPRK denuclearization, North-South rapprochement, and regional economic development, they largely overlap, as they have for two decades.

It has always been clear that President Moon would face a point, sooner or later, when he had to confront the contradictions of the ideological and impractical positions of U.S. and Korean opponents of engagement on the one hand, and the rare confluence of interests and opportunities for North-South, regional and North-U.S. deals for progress on the other. Now is that point.

Trump and his administration simply cannot be trusted. Following rather than leading Trump will make Moon untrustworthy to the skittish North Koreans. If his government is to be successful it is time for him to tell Trump how this will go, what he will get, and what he can't do. He and Trump could come up with their own CBMs fast. Moon can then help Trump set the atmosphere.

Stephen Costello (scost55@gmail.com) is a producer of AsiaEast, a web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C.