Pompeo can practice diplomacy or fantasy - but not both

By Stephen Costello

The fundamental concepts at the heart of U.S. policy toward North Korea have been wrong for 17 years, and clearly so.

Now President Trump will either make new U.S.-DPRK agreements using older, more realistic concepts or he will surrender to the Bush/Obama failed playbook. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's talks in Pyongyang last week suggest the choice between these two is becoming more urgent.

The key concept that the U.S. has relied on is that the North needs pressure and coercion in order to “change its calculations” and embrace denuclearization. But it has indicated its preference for economic development over nuclear weapons for years, and demonstrated it.

American journalists and specialists have also swallowed a deliberate misreading of U.S.-DPRK negotiating history. It was the U.S., not the DPRK, that destroyed the working Agreed Framework, and it did so for political and ideological reasons, as the principals' books make clear. This was a regional and generational catastrophe. Trump now has created an opportunity to begin walking the U.S. back from that terrible mistake.

Today it is troubling that Pompeo, over the course of three trips to Pyongyang and numerous other meetings and exchanges with interlocutors, has apparently been unable or unwilling to tell President Trump that some of his statements and formulations for making progress with North Korea are dangerous nonsense.

Not the statements about the threat from the North being over, or about the economic development possibilities that U.S.-DPRK cooperation can unleash. Those are some of the most strategically accurate by a U.S. president in many years.

The real dangerous statements are about the U.S. position. In the simplest sense, Trump has repeatedly said Pyongyang will give up what it sees as its deterrent capability and the U.S. will give up nothing but meaningless symbols. White House national security adviser John Bolton has gleefully supported these messages, most likely because they can only lead to an end to diplomatic activity.

During successful diplomacy with North Korea in the 1990s, sincere U.S. actions to decrease military tension and promote economic development formed the basis of the American position.

Similar actions would have to do so again today, since North Korea's need for security and development remain little changed from those years, despite its nuclear and missile capabilities.

When President Obama embraced President Bush's approach in 2009, which relied on coercion, isolation and threats instead of reciprocal diplomatic agreements, he joined John Bolton, Dick Chaney, Victor Cha and the Republican Party in a bold experiment.

Their stated premise was that coercion would achieve the North's capitulation without the complex morality of “negotiating with evil.” Instead they insured eight more years of policy paralysis, and they provoked the growth of nuclear and missile programs that did not exist under the agreements of the 1990s.

Trump may think his great insight into how to deal with Kim Jung-un is to meet face-to-face and pause military exercises, but those are not the things Kim needs most.

Rather, Trump's big improvement over the policies of his two predecessors will be to offer sincere security, such as an end to the Korean War, and real economic development, which can only begin when sanctions are relaxed.

There is a phrase for taking these actions in response to DPRK progress in declaring, capping and rolling back its destabilizing weapons: phased, reciprocal efforts that build trust. In other words, diplomacy.

If he does these things all countries in the region will support his efforts. If instead he clings to the Bush/Obama playbook, he will postpone the denuclearization of the North. He will also keep the U.S. on the sidelines of developments in Northeast Asia, and empty again of leverage to positively impact the region.

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.