Moon's gamble on Trump

By Stephen Costello

WASHINGTON ― U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley spoke with Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and with reporters at the U.N. this week. As a result, we now know much more about the U.S. position on North Korea, seven weeks after the Singapore summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.

Mystery of the Singapore summit

One great mystery during this time has been: What did Trump and Kim say directly to each other? Another was: What did Trump and Pompeo think they could accomplish in post-Singapore negotiations? The basic text from the Singapore meeting was promising, because it contained the balance ― between what the U.S. wanted and what the DPRK wanted ― that had been lacking in the North Korea-U.S. relationship for over a decade.

But public statements from Trump administration figures since Singapore repeatedly cast the North as a defeated country. Both Joseph Yun and Robert Gallucci have warned that complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) is dangerous, wishful thinking. U.S. administration voices have lacked all balance.

One possible explanation is that congressmen and White House advisers quickly pushed back against what Trump had promised, forcing him to deny the Singapore deal. Whatever the reason, Trump seems to be incapable of speaking clearly about North Korea. After all, the experienced deputies who helped Pompeo prepare for Singapore have now been sent back to their offices. Who could Trump turn to for sound advice?

There has been no word about how the U.S. would carry out its promise to change the relationship, or to move to end the state of war still existing at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). On the issues that are all-important to Kim regarding sanctions relief, not only has there been no guide to how or when that would happen, but in Pompeo's statements there has been the opposite: determination to maintain or increase the pressure to strangle the North Korean economy and isolate it diplomatically.

While no one with experience in Korean affairs during the past 20 years would believe Kim promised to abandon and ship out his nuclear and other programs before getting credible security and economic enhancements first, that is apparently what Trump thinks he negotiated. Remarkably, much of the mainstream press shares this fiction with Trump.

Pompeo has now proved that he either shares this belief with Trump or is unable to tell him the truth: that this is ― and always would have been ― a two-way, step-by-step process, in which each side gets some of what it needs.

Seoul can't hide its middle power status

Despite the regular attempts by various players to portray these issues as left vs. right or conservative vs. progressive, they are more fundamental. They are more clearly about modernism vs. outmoded worldviews. They are also about honest, credible and strategic diplomacy vs. empty posturing and diplomatic incapacity.

Before we assume that the issues of North Korea's denuclearization, escape from isolation, and long-awaited economic development are tests of political style or rhetoric, we should consider recent U.S. history.

In 2009 President Barack Obama adopted President George W. Bush's approach to North Korea, and went on to achieve the same counterproductive results for U.S. interests that Bush's policies had produced.

After 16 years of this, Hillary Clinton gave every indication that she would have continued the same policies. Therefore, the larger questions of the U.S. role on the Korean Peninsula, and the South Korean capability to embrace its middle power status, are now on the table.

In contrast to the foreign policy of Trump and the Republicans, it is also unmistakable that the tough engagement and deals of the 1990s were successful at both capping the nuclear and missile programs and creating leverage useable against human rights abuses and illegal activities in North Korea.

The so-called “tough” and “hard line” approaches of conservatives in Seoul and Washington, in contrast, provoked steady growth in the North's weapons and abandoned all leverage to impact its policies. One way to see this is that we have now emerged from 10 years in Seoul and 16 years in Washington of unserious, confused, and counterproductive attention to Pyongyang.

Trump may very well be able to conclude the deal that Bush, Obama and Hillary were unable to imagine: a true upgrade and extension to the best U.S. diplomacy on Korea ― or any proto-nuclear state ― that the U.S. has ever practiced. That was the Clinton years, the Agreed Framework, and the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization.

But Trump has also embraced the Republican Party, and a collection of lowest-common-denominator aides. Neither Trump nor his staff have any experience in building structures that use and leverage existing institutions to improve policy. They are exclusively dedicated to tearing things down and threatening.

The Pompeo/Haley press conference of last week should confirm their instincts, and their inability to imagine practical, strategic diplomacy. For additional evidence of this, Pompeo's recent rant against the Iranian regime, and its devastating impact on the JCPOA denuclearization deal, allied interests, and U.S. goals, should help. Even if Trump wanted to make a durable deal, his own NSC adviser and many others around him and in the Congress would oppose it.

Seoul can lose initiative

That leaves Seoul to either follow along as its U.S. ally re-emerges as an obstacle to progress, denuclearization, diplomacy, peace and development; or to stand up and produce a roadmap for corresponding steps, multilateral and U.N. support, and its role as key manager of this effort. Everyone else is waiting for Seoul to do this, including may experienced Americans.

Spencer Kim advocated for one of the parties to do just this, in an article in The Korea Times on July 23. Using a business model, he said, “There needs to be a comprehensive peace treaty, it has to include the details all sides want to see, and it has to be “permanent.”

Kim concludes: “Someone in one of the three core countries must now put pen to paper to start building a business plan for success. If it leads to a lasting security architecture for Korea, the shareholders in the business are in for a lengthy period of fat dividends.”

As Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il agreed in Pyongyang in June 2000, this is primarily “Korean business.” But there are also others' interests involved. As the South Korean president said 18 years ago, “If you cannot satisfy the Japanese about their abducted people, and satisfy the Americans about your nuclear programs, then I can't help you. No one can help you.”

Today there are indications that the North Korean leader is once again willing to switch priorities from his nuclear to his economic development programs. Although the U.S. still wields pressure, in terms of diplomatic and leadership capacity, it is flat on its back. When South Korea was in danger of being overrun by North Korean and Chinese soldiers, the U.S. backed them up.

Sixty-five years later, remains of some of those young Americans are finally being sent back home. In a diplomatic sense, the shoe is now on the other foot. The U.S. needs its grown-up Korean ally to stand up and do what is in both country's best interests.

The time for waiting and hoping and convincing is over. Seoul has plenty of personnel to draw upon. Minister Kang is a U.S. and U.N. specialist. Two of the best U.S. officials in years, Ambassador Harry Harris and USKF Commander Vincent Brooks, are now in Seoul. This administration's task is clear: Produce a roadmap, line up support, and drive the agreements to conclusion. Only three years and eight months to go.

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.