Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-In met today on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, in the DMZ. Their last meeting was on the South Korean side.
It’s clear that they want to work out something, even if the American president is playing junior high hard-to-get. They do have to get the adolescent to the table, though. The United States has troops in South Korea and probably would have to be a party to a peace treaty. The American officials planning the summit are heading to Singapore.
It’s not all bad that the two Koreas’ leaders are taking the initiative and maintaining momentum while Trump sulks in his room and tweets lies, which seem to be worse this morning than usual. He is blaming the Democrats for ICE’s separating mothers from their children at the border under his administration’s orders. Last night he did tweet that the Korean summit might take place after all. Tune in to the next episode!
It looks like Kim Jong Un genuinely wants some sort of negotiations. He probably feels that his nuclear arsenal is at an appropriate stage to deter an American attack, and now he wants to begin improving North Korea’s economy. But Trump and company are going to have to shut up about “Libya solutions” and the nuclear threats. Or maybe North and South Korea can come up with an agreement they can present to him to sign.
In another development, Siegfried Hecker and his associates at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) have posted an enormous database of everything all the parties to the North Korean situation have ever done – nuclear weapons development, diplomacy – with a graphical indicator of whether the developments were more peaceful or warlike. Sig presented a preview when he was here in January, and I’ve been looking for it eagerly. Here’s his summary:
The color chart and written narrative chronicle the year-by-year evolution of the key political, diplomatic and technical developments. The analysis illuminates how critical decisions affected the direction of the nuclear program. pic.twitter.com/CO8NhJbq1x
— Siegfried Hecker (@SiegfriedHecker) May 26, 2018
2) US diplomacy since 2000 has been sporadic, reactive, and often motivated by a desire to avoid risk instead of manage risk. North Korea's nuclear program has been slowed, sometimes reversed, during periods of diplomacy but it has never been abandoned.
— Siegfried Hecker (@SiegfriedHecker) May 26, 2018
4) The narrative that North Korea has cheated on every agreement is neither accurate nor useful. We need to better understand the history of North Korea's nuclear program so as to not repeat mistakes.
— Siegfried Hecker (@SiegfriedHecker) May 26, 2018
5) As bad as it was in 2017, the situation could get worse. The US has missed several opportunities in the past by not managing the incremental risks. The US must approach any denuclearization talks with an awareness of this history and a desire to manage the incremental risks.
— Siegfried Hecker (@SiegfriedHecker) May 26, 2018
I’ve got people working in the yard, so I’ll be back and forth today.