Diplomatic mission impossible

By Choi Sung-jin

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, unlike the current occupant of the White House, is seen as a reasonable and predictable person. Biden has reaffirmed this through his recent selections for key cabinet posts.

For example, Biden's nominee for state secretary, Antony Blinken, and his pick for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were as experts had expected.

Diplomats and foreign affairs specialists here also have paid the greatest attention to the two posts, especially the state secretary portfolio. They tried to read Biden's mind in tapping the two long-time aides to lead his foreign policy-national security team.

Initial analyses by these talking heads do not appear to be very hopeful, as far as the situation on the Korean Peninsula is concerned. Particularly so for North Korea and the South's Moon Jae-in administration seeking inter-Korean detente. Based on Blinken's hawkish track record on the North, pessimistic analysts say the “good old days under Trump” are over and will not come again.

Optimists see the same person from the opposite direction.

Citing Blinken's role as a key architect of the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015 ― the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) ― they predict he will try to apply the same formula to North Korea. The gradual approach of freezing nuclear programs first, followed by a corresponding lifting of sanctions could be far better than the Trump administration's all-or-nothing approach toward the North's denuclearization.

Seen differently, however, President Donald Trump's “top-down” negotiating style could be more effective in dealing with a country like North Korea where all the power is in the hands of a single autocrat. In contrast, Biden's businesslike “bottom-up” style takes too much time and is vulnerable to miscommunication between the two sides that already have a mistrust of each other. One has only to look back at why some landmark deals between Washington and Pyongyang went up in smoke while they were being put into action.

Conservatives on both sides of the Pacific attributed it to the North's deception, saying the North had no intention at all to abandon its nuclear programs. Pyongyang, on the other hand, alleges the breakdowns of accords were due to the U.S. changing its mind, particularly when the political power in Washington changed hands. President Trump was an exceptional Republican leader who at least showed attention to solving the North Korean problem “in his own way” ― although he was more interested in shows than substance.

All this explains why President Moon, in his first phone talk with Biden, hoped they would build up from what Trump has accomplished ― the Singapore agreement in June 2018 ― in a top-down style. However, Moon should know better than pressing the new U.S. administration to “start from Singapore.”

From the standpoint of Washington, the Singapore agreement was a half-baked deal at best, and a near fiasco at worst. It was too abstract without concrete action plans and accepted Pyongyang's decade-long demand for normalizing ties first and denuclearizing later. For the accord to be a useful starting point, the two sides should first dissolve their difference over its priority.

Unless preceded by such efforts, Moon's overemphasis of the accord could lead to another diplomatic disaster, as former President Kim Dae-jung experienced while trying to sell his “sunshine policy” of engaging North Korea to newly elected George W. Bush some two decades ago.

This is but one of the many stumbling blocks in the way to maintaining the peace process on this peninsula. There will likely be a diplomatic void in the next six months or so while the new U.S. administration scrutinizes its predecessor's policy and sets up its direction. For President Moon who has only a year and a half left in office, the next half-year will have to be a crucial and very busy period diplomatically.

Above all, Moon and his national security team should persuade their northern counterparts to be patient and not provoke the new U.S. government with nuclear and/or missile tests. Similar efforts of persuasion should be made toward Washington to refrain from the South Korea-U.S. joint military drills next spring not to give Pyongyang an excuse for tit-for-tat provocations while asking the U.S. side not to put the North Korean issue on the back burner.

Seoul should also try its utmost to keep the escalating U.S.-China tension over the global hegemony from adversely affecting the peace process. The increasingly confident and self-assertive Beijing could feel tempted to hold the isolated North closer to its side and press the South not to join the U.S. maneuver to contain China. Maintaining the equidistant diplomacy between the G2 while inducing Beijing to move more actively for the North's denuclearization will be another enormous task.

To sum up, Seoul should do all it can, Pyongyang ought to learn to be patient, Beijing needs to play a more constructive role and Washington should pay more attention, to solve the North Korean nuclear crisis and make this part of the world safer and more stable.

Recently, Israel's spy agency assassinated Iran's most prominent nuclear weapons expert. The incident has a far greater impact than a butterfly effect on the Korean Peninsula. It has two implications for Seoul. First, some countries already began to move to preset the new U.S. administration's foreign policy directions. Assuming the murder could have been made under the tacit approval of the incumbent U.S. government, it also showed the U.S. military-industrial complex and other hawks remain adamantly opposed to rapprochement with what they see as “rogue states,” be it Iran or North Korea.

The next half-year should be a time for bolder but shrewder diplomacy. All this may be a diplomatic mission impossible. However, the time has long passed for Seoul to do nothing and only study the face of its ally.

Choi Sung-jin (choisj1955@naver.com) is a Korea Times columnist.