 |
| It may look like reporter Andy Salmon and author Michael Breen squaring off with each other, drawing looks of concern from the other participants. True, we parted our ways without lunch as in the Hanoi summit, the subject of the Times' roundtable, but the conversation was conducted in quite a civilized manner with no punches thrown at but pulled from each other. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
By Andrew Salmon
There had been widespread expectations and high hopes, but in the event, the highly anticipated" and "historic" second summit, held in Hanoi between North Korean and the United States, crashed and burned.
For most of us in Hanoi ― sipping the excellent Vietnamese coffee and enjoying the ease of covering a summit in which there were only two players, and no delegations to chase around town to try to doorstop ― it was a shock outcome.
Things had looked so good. There had been grins and mutual back pats between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump. The chemistry between the delegations looked excellent. Kim had even made a minor bit of history by answering a question from a reporter.
Then, as we all know, the U.S. delegation "walked."
The blame game looks likely to continue for months if not years.
Had Kim been overconfident that the Americans would be prepared to accept the dismantlement of his central nuclear complex at Yongbyon in the expectation that he could retain his secretive highly enriched uranium program?
Had National Security Adviser John Bolton, the last Washington Neo-con, torpedoed the summit by demanding a massive deal that had not been on the table in preliminary talks, and that he knew the North Koreans could not accept?
Did Trump, the self-described great negotiator, want to show how tough he was to supporters back home ― or had he finally bought into the pessimism of some in Washington, becoming convinced that Kim is not, in fact, prepared to offer up his "treasured sword?"
At this point, all is not clear. Is there any upside? Perhaps.
.jpg/dims/resize/84/optimize)
North Korea: Is Trump failing? 2019-03-26 14:02 | North Korea
The two parties, thanks to the pre-summit talks and the summit itself, now have much clearer ideas of each other's positions. And despite the indignant tone of North Korean communications in their two post-summit press conferences, neither leader is criticizing the other. Post-summit, Trump called Kim "quite a guy" while North Korea praised the "mysterious" bond between Kim and Trump. .
But there are more downsides.
While U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has expressed hopes of getting negotiators back into North Korea, North Korea has made no response as yet. And even if it did ― what is the point?
Pompeo's channel with his North Korean counterpart Kim Yong-chol delivered virtually nothing in the wake of the Singapore summit. The more recent sub-ministerial channel spectacularly failed to deliver at the summit.
The failure of all sub-presidential negotiations since Singapore to move the situation forward ― combined with the failure of all North Korea-U.S. negotiation in the years and decades before Singapore to upgrade relations between the two countries ― indicates that only leader-level talks can generate a significant and lasting outcome.
So will there be a third summit? Probably not in the near future, because there are potential near-term stumbling blocks in the U.S.
What if Trump faces impeachment? Or what if he has to fight for his agenda, his political life and his political heritage right up until the election ― and then fails to be re-elected?
In this sense, Trump has a lot more fish to fry than Kim. This suggests that if there is to be another summit, Kim has to make the first big move.
That could be difficult. If Kim tries a missile test to grab U.S. attention, all bets are off, given how fulsomely Trump has praised the ongoing North Korean test moratorium. Hopefully, Kim will not cross that red line. But if he does not, to lure Trump back to the table, he will have to have a real deal to present.
This leads us to the big questions about North Korea ― the question to which nobody outside Pyongyang's corridors of power knows the answer.
Is Kim afraid of the mercurial Trump, who in 2017 was seriously ready to go to war? If so, his strategy is likely to be to wait out Trump's presidency until a more predictable president returns to the White House.
Or does Kim consider the unconventional Trump his only real hope for a breakthrough in U.S. relations? If so, that means he will have to hustle to get a deal done within his presidency.
Kim's moves in the months to come may offer the answer to these questions.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter covering the Koreas.
