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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / North Korea’s Christmas Present

North Korea’s Christmas Present

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Back in May, I argued that Donald Trump’s tactic toward North Korea would be to pretend he didn’t hear what was happening as long as he could. I call the tactic “LALALALALA I can’t hear you” and tweet that with news that Trump is keeping it going.

It’s a dangerous tactic, and a number of my national security colleagues have been raising concerns about it. Kim Jong Un has set a deadline of the end of the year for…something. He hasn’t said exactly what, but he has been testing missiles, and his officials have been making unfriendly statements. Kim has said that he is not waiting for the end of the year and has a “Christmas present” for Trump.

Trump’s response so far: LALALALALA and a couple of “Rocket man” tweets. He continues to say that his good friend Kim would not violate the “strong deal” they agreed on in Singapore.

The Singapore statement commits neither North Korea nor the United States to any actions. At most, it might be said to be a statement of principles. And it contains the phrase “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” which, to North Korea, means a vague future in which the United States leaves South Korea so that the North feels safe enough to give up its nuclear weapons. Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, use the phrase to mean that North Korea must give up its nuclear weapons before they will even discuss lifting sanctions.

The phrase has historically been used in its North Korean meaning, so they have the better of that argument.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been threatening the South Korean government. In late November, he demanded that South Korea pay five times what it has been for the presence of American troops in that country. In response, South Korea threatened to end intelligence cooperation with the United States and Japan, but backed away from that threat. Although Trump has focused more on his impeachment since then, his demand for more money from South Korea is consistent with his misunderstandings of how alliances work and their benefits to the United States. If he continues to insist on that payment, he will lessen his leverage for negotiating with North Korea.

North Korea has been testing missiles throughout the year. They recently did an engine test that could be for an ICBM that could reach the United States or for a satellite launch. The test was different in a number of ways from earlier tests, but satellite photos of the site don’t contain enough information to fully diagnose it.

All these threads could dovetail in the next few weeks. The negotiations with North Korea are going nowhere, although Special Envoy Stephen Biegun has optimistically suggested he’s ready to meet. North Korea has said that that time has passed. They are getting ready for what they hope will be an impressive weapons test, more likely missile than nuclear.

A further complication has just appeared. China and Russia have drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution that proposes that the Security Council lift sanctions on North Korean exports of seafood and textiles. It also proposes lifting the ban on North Korean workers abroad and would terminate a 2017 requirement that all North Korean workers be repatriated by next week. If the resolution goes to a vote, it will put the US in a difficult position. If the US vetoes, we are the bad guys. If we allow it through, the result is worse than the offer Trump refused at Hanoi.

Trump and Pompeo have shown no sign of movement from the position that North Korea must disarm itself of its nuclear weapons before they will even talk. What Biegun has said so far does not contradict that.

How long can Trump continue with LALALALALA I can’t hear you? We may find out in the next two weeks.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    burnspbesq

    Lovely. Just f’in lovely. And as long as the Dow keeps going up, investors will keep worshiping Trump’s ass.

  2. 2.

    Mary G

    Oh, for Dog’s sake. The last thing we need is for Twitler to have pushed China and Russia into each other’s arms against us.

  3. 3.

    Another Scott

    Thanks.

    Relatedly, TheBulletin – Santa Kim is coming to town…:

    […]

    Naughty or nice? If there is a “Christmas gift” that awaits the United States, it is unlikely to be something as pedestrian as a short-range ballistic missile. Instead, Kim is likely gearing up for one of three possibilities: a second launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM (the same one launched once in November 2017); the inaugural flight-test of a solid propellant ICBM or intermediate-range ballistic missile; or the inaugural launch of a new-generation of space launch vehicle.

    […]

    There is reason to expect that whatever North Korea does will include something qualitatively new. For instance, if Kim does order a second test of the Hwasong-15 ICBM, we may expect to see a new type of indigenously built heavy launch vehicle. That would be a notable development, as it would indicate that North Korea had managed to successfully wean itself off its reliance on the six-odd heavy logging trucks that it had imported under false pretext from China and converted for use as transporter-erector-launchers. Separately, Kim may choose to use a new launch to overfly Japan into the northern Pacific with an ICBM—something North Korea has never done before. A recent statement hinting that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should expect to see a ballistic missile suggests that whatever may be coming is likely to either splash down in the waters around Japan or overfly the country. Kim may also choose to demonstrate a multiple reentry vehicle capability off the Hwasong-15.

    Perhaps the most interesting option for North Korea, however, would be a space launch. Unlike missile tests, which are revealed to the world only when they happen, North Korea insists that its space activities are entirely civilian in nature and peaceful. In the past, this has meant that it goes to pains to behave like a “normal” country, issuing warnings to respectable international organizations like the International Maritime Organization indicating hazard zones for spent rocket stages falling back to earth. There hasn’t been a satellite launch in North Korea since February 2016 and, in late-2017 and early-2018, there were strong signs that Pyongyang was hard at work at a successor generation of space launch vehicles to the Unha-3, which launched the Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite in 2016. North Korean space program officials have indicated interest in geosynchronous orbit payloads and earth-observation satellites. None of North Korea’s previous orbital payloads are known to have performed useful remote sensing work; that may be about to change.

    […]

    Kim and the US election. President Trump’s recent reaction to North Korea’s test at Sohae contained a curious assertion: Kim “does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the US Presidential Election in November.” Trump has famously been unwilling to acknowledge the well-substantiated Russian state-backed effort to interfere in the 2016 election, so it is curious that North Korea—a country that has not publicly, credibly been accused of election interference—came under his microscope. Could the president have an unpublicized deal with Kim to hold off on missile and nuclear testing through the 2020 US elections? Publicly available evidence would suggest no, but complete accounts of the president’s discussions with Kim Jong Un are not readily available.

    The president, after Singapore, made a habit of emphasizing that his diplomacy had gotten North Korea to stop launching ballistic missiles and conducting nuclear tests. In April 2018, Kim Jong Un, at the fourth plenum of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, announced a unilateral moratorium on ICBM and nuclear tests—with the reasoning that North Korea‘s development efforts through 2017 were so robust that no further testing was required. Trump still used the moratorium to great effect, convincing many of his supporters that his bold and personal diplomacy with Kim had gotten results that no American leaders had gotten in the past. (Kim’s father agreed to a long-range missile testing moratorium in 1999 that lasted through July 2006.)

    Kim Jong Un, however, does have leverage to engineer a crisis at an inopportune time. With an election less than eleven months away, Trump has reason to stay Kim’s hand from signing any ICBM test orders, lest the fiction of the “Singapore process” erode completely in the eyes of the American public. But, as 2017 showed, North Korea’s search for leverage in the form of qualitatively advancing its nuclear forces can push decision-makers in Washington toward dangerous ends. Where Trump’s instincts during the diplomatic process with Kim were to express his feelings through heartfelt letters, hand-written and delivered to Kim’s desk, the president may find himself once again drawn to expressing himself through “fire and fury,” sparking a new crisis.

    An interesting read.

    I’m not at all confident that Donnie and Pompeo and their team have any idea of what they’re doing when it comes to trying to come to a sensible agreement with Kim.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  4. 4.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    How long can Trump continue with LALALALALA I can’t hear you?

    That sure looks like Trump’s response to any set back. I get the feeling Trump is a very unusual position in society were he could get away with refusing to deal with it for so long.

  5. 5.

    Keith P

    Maybe Kim heard about Trump taking 15 flushes to clear a toilet bowl, so he’s giving Don a gift of homemade kimchi.

  8. 8.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Another Scott:

    I’m not at all confident that Donnie and Pompeo and their team have any idea of what they’re doing when it comes to trying to come to a sensible agreement with Kim.

    Negotiating the Iran nuclear deal required a US team of something like 150 people, including specialists in nuclear issues, finance, and the country itself. Plus translators to make sure that the treaty said the same things in both languages, and of course staff to get it written up and such. They also called back to the national laboratories where people were on call 24 hours to answer questions and do calculations.

    Trump has no concept of that. He thinks a handshake and a Sharpie signature are the whole story. It’s hard to know what Pompeo thinks, because his main objective is sucking up to his boss.

  9. 9.

    patrick II

    @Another Scott:

    I am not sure what a sensible deal with Kim would look like. Any deal that would satisfy him would probably require withdrawal of U.S. troops.   Trump’s demand for increased payments from South Korea may not be just about his aversion to high cost.

  10. 10.

    Butter Emails

    How long can Trump continue with LALALALALA I can’t hear you? We may find out in the next two weeks.

    My predictions:

    Trump and Republicans: They’ll keep going LALALALALA until the next time a Democrat is elected president at which point they will immediately become aware of all the global problems and blame them on the Democrat while actively opposing any policy that might fix them. They’ll also occasionally switch up LALALALA for blameObama.

    The Press: When Kim’s Christmas present to Trump is revealed, the press will briefly rise from it’s slumber, poke its head out of its burrow, note that the shadow has a trunk and tusks and then go back to sleep until next January.

  13. 13.

    Jay

    @Mary G

    Dotus didn’t push Putin and Xi into each others arms.

    The SCO:

    The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), or Shanghai Pact,[1] is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai, China by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Charter, formally establishing the organisation, was signed in June 2002 and entered into force on 19 September 2003. The original five nations, with the exclusion of Uzbekistan, were previously members of the Shanghai Five group, founded on 26 April 1996. Since then, the organisation has expanded its membership to eight countries when India and Pakistan joined SCO as full members on 9 June 2017 at a summit in Astana, Kazakhstan. The Heads of State Council (HSC) is the supreme decision-making body in the SCO, it meets once a year and adopts decisions and guidelines on all important matters of the organisation. Military exercises are also regularly conducted among members to promote cooperation and coordination against terrorism and other external threats, and to maintain regional peace and stability.[2][3]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework

    Russia and China have been on “the same page” in regards to the NORKs since the Agreed Framework died of neglect in 2003.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation

    Their platform is pretty simple:
    – don’t piss off the Kims,
    – prop the Regime up enough so it doesn’t collapse or feel the need to blow up the Koreas,
    – humour Kim in his indulgences when needed,
    – use Kim as a foil against the US, Japan, South Korea and other regional powers if possible.
    – try to make some money back from the NORKs, knowing they will never make good on the loans or even cover the vig.

  16. 16.

    joel hanes

    @patrick II:

    I am not sure what a sensible deal with Kim would look like.

    We had one, once, the “Agreed Framework” established by Pres. Bill Clinton. Under that agreement, many of North Korea’s nuclear facilities were sealed, and the seals were monitored.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework

    President W Bush smashed that agreement when he peremptorily declared North Korea a member of the “Axis of Evil”.

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    If confirmed by the Senate, they will serve for life.

    Life has a funny way of being cut short sometimes

  22. 22.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    No. No more than the JPCOA.

    There’s that old saying, fool me once,……

    Treaties signed by an American President, even when ratified by the US Senate, with any idealogical component, are only good for the length of his term, the lenght of his sucessors term if from the same wing of the same Party, or their Parties control of the Senate, which ever comes first,

    so 2 years or less.

  23. 23.

    patrick II

    @joel hanes:

    What would a sensible deal look like to  kim now, after Bush and Trump? We are not a reliable partner to any agreement, as Kim’s dad and recently Iraq have found.

  24. 24.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @patrick II:

    We are not a reliable partner to any agreement, as Kim’s dad and recently Iraq have found.

    Right, because the US is the only one that’s become unreliable lately. Brazil, the UK, the list goes on.

    Besides, global political chaos will likely become the norm by mid-century due to climate change

  25. 25.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    As if other nations aren’t subject to the same forces. Pretty high and mighty of them. Climate change will wipe away that smug attitude of theirs in a few decades

  27. 27.

    jonas

    @Butter Emails:They’ll keep going LALALALALA until the next time a Democrat is elected president at which point they will immediately become aware of all the global problems and blame them on the Democrat

    Yup. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    @Jay: “Treaties” ratified by the Senate are the supreme law of the land, up there with the Constitution.  The Agreed Framework and the JCPOA were not Treaties.

    HTH.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  29. 29.

    justawriter

    The situation does make for an interesting negotiating position for the next Democratic president in 2021 in regard to negotiations between South Korea and Japan.

    “Sorry guys, I can’t guarantee the American people in the future won’t vote an even dumber and more aggressive candidate who will suck up to China and Russia, so you will have to work together to protect yourselves, because let’s be honest, you don’t have a lot of friends close by if I go back on the crazy train. So let’s let WWII stay in the 20th Century and you guys work together in case my country decides to immolate itself in 2024.”

  30. 30.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    there used to be a lot of countries who were “good for their word”. The US used to be the cornerstone of that system for most nations, from 1918 -2003. What was seen as an abberation in 2003 is now seen as the norm.

    as a result of global economic and power shifts, along with some nations rise, some nations fall and some nations horribly self inflicted wounds, the world is moving on.

     

    y’all started kicking friends and family in the teeth over 15 years ago, and digging up old grudges and acting on them. For 8 years y’all had a really nice Dad, but for 6 of those years the kids were utter brats and trashed the place. Then of course, you put Dotus in charge and the only adults in the room, are forced by your new Daddy to sit at the kids table, and they have only been there for 2 years, even though Dotus’s Reich seems to have lasted for 1000 years,…….

    if you can fix your House, which is going to take long time, you are going to come back to a World Stage that is very different, from the One Belt, One Road, to new Regional Powers and Blocs, Climate Change, Russian and Chinese Africa, a NATO that’s not NATO anymore, a different WTO and an AngloAmerican Alliance that doesn’t exist anymore because Britain won’t exist anymore, just to name a few.

    So, no, the NORKs, Iranians, Iraqis, probably the Afghans won’t really care what you want, what you don’t want and any offers you put on the table.

    It’s pretty bad when Lil’ Kim appears to be the sane one.

    Elections have consequences.

     

    The passive aggressive lashing out and whining however, is a very nice Doltus touch.

  31. 31.

    joel hanes

    @patrick II:

    I have no idea what would constitute a sensible deal.

    Postulating a sensible nation in negotiations with the US under a Dem President in 2021, that nation would be wise to privately think “No way will we trust Americans to bargain in good faith or keep their words or honor their commitments.”

    So we can expect other nations to demand the equivalent of the aristocratic hostages of Europe’s feudal age:  for security, we must expect them to stipulate, as a condition of any major agreement,  the ability to damage our vital interests if we again go back on our word.

    In short, I don’t think that other nations will be eager to strike binding agreements with us again any time soon — probably not in my lifetime.

  33. 33.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    y’all started kicking friends and family in the teeth over 15 years ago, and digging up old grudges and acting on them. For 8 years y’all had a really nice Dad, but for 6 of those years the kids were utter brats and trashed the place. Then of course, you put Dotus in charge and the only adults in the room, are forced by your new Daddy to sit at the kids table, and they have only been there for 2 years, even though Dotus’s Reich seems to have lasted for 1000 years,…….

    That was the GOP. Them. They’re the enemies of peace. They are not representative of America in numerous ways. I and a bunch of other people tried to make sure Bush and Trump were never going to be elected but foreign ratfuckers interfered in Trump’s case, and domestic ones interfered in Bush’s case. Fundamentally, we were attacked.

    The passive aggressive lashing out and whining however, is a very nice Doltus touch.

    What’s that supposed to mean? I wasn’t “lashing out” or “whining”. It’s true that climate change will likely make much of the Earth uninhabitable. Rising temperatures lead to increased violence. The rise of racist nationalism is a global phenomenon and likely linked to climate change. This will only become worse as we approach mid-century and beyond. The future you describe will probably not come to pass as human civilization will struggle to survive. Everyone, even the PRC and Russia, will eventually succumb

  35. 35.

    joel hanes

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    <em>What’s that supposed to mean?</em>

    Characterizing nations who are dismayed with America’s recent bad faith and boorishness as “smug” may not have been interpreted exactly as you intended.

    I found it grating.  Others may have.

  36. 36.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @joel hanes:

    I guess I probably shouldn’t have said that. I just feel like the US is being singled out as the only nation in the world that’s going nuts, when a lot of other places are too, including the supposed inheritors of the global order, the PRC. Xi has made the Chinese system more rigid and in doing so, more fragile. They’re currently ethnically cleansing an entire group of people. I just think that if/when the PRC takes control, it’ll be around the same time climate change begins to really eat our lunch, so it won’t really matter anyway.

    Does this make sense? I’m sorry that I was grating.

  43. 43.

    Sab

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My sis goes to China a lot. She says the last crew were a bunch of civic engineers. They just wanted to build stuff to fix stuff.

    Xi, the new guy, is married to a traditional music popstar. He cares a lot about popular culture as a way to influence peoples thinking. Sort of a new Mao. That is scary.  He doesn’t want to fix stuff. He wants to control stuff.

  44. 44.

    Matt

    It also proposes lifting the ban on North Korean workers abroad and would terminate a 2017 requirement that all North Korean workers be repatriated by next week.

    Shorter Russia and China: “We’re very concerned we might lose our slavesworkers”

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