Don’t expect a favorable deal from the upcoming summit.
Expectations for the bilateral summit between the U.S. and North Korea in Singapore are already being lowered. Donald Trump has moved forward the time at which he will leave, and warned that this is just the beginning of a longer process. And yet, I think expectations should be lowered further still.
As far as we know, North Korea is in the strongest position it has been in decades. Kim Jong-un has consolidated his control of the North Korean regime. He has overseen a rapid improvement for his state’s nuclear arsenal. The photo ops in South Korea and the summit with the American president are prizes for the North Korean government. You’ve built an intercontinental ballistic missile; come and collect your summit.
On the other side, the divisions seem endless: divisions in the American delegation, divisions between America and South Korea, and between South Korea and America’s other East Asian allies.
Although everyone denies there is any split within the administration, secretary of state Mike Pompeo has made Korea his personal project and expended great energy in preparing for the summit, promising that President Trump is willing to press further for a deal than any previous president. National-security adviser John Bolton seems determined that no deals be made that don’t inflict immediate, obvious losses on the North Korean government. Which is another way of saying that no deals will be made.
There are divides between America and its East Asian allies. The mismatch between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump could not be more obvious. They resemble each other in their manifest self-confidence, and their public pretense of being men of destiny. But their treatment of the North Korean issue could not contrast more. Moon picked up on the Sunshine policy of his mentor, Roh Moo-hyun. He has been proposing sweeping ideas for harmonizing the economic market of the Korean peninsula. Before the summit, Trump had been threatening “fire and fury” for North Korea.
There are divides both within the American delegation and between the U.S. and South Korea.
Trump comes into the Korean peninsula as a man who thinks American dependents are not grateful enough for America’s military protection. Moon Jae-in hails from a sector of South Korean politics that sees the U.S. as a very imperfect protector, one that sponsored brutal and anti-democratic governments in post-war South Korea. Moon’s chief of staff is Im Jong-seok, a former student activist who belonged to Juchesasangpa groups that detested the authoritarianism of the Park Chung-he government and promoted “juche,” the racial-socialist philosophy of the North Korean state. It should be relatively easy for North Korean negotiators to find ways to play Trump against Moon and vice versa.
Trump wants a foreign-policy achievement, but North Korea will not be anxious to make any meaningful concessions unless two things are true. 1) North Korean currency reserves are depleted to the point that the regime is in danger of no longer functioning. 2) The collapse of Mount Mantap above its nuclear-testing site has somehow fatally crippled the North Korean nuclear program altogether. Though the possibility of regime collapse should never be discounted entirely, we have no reason to believe these two conditions obtain currently. Instead, Kim is smartly pressing forward with his state’s long-term strategy of achieving sufficient military deterrence to force states to normalize relations and assist in its long-term development.
North Korea has been a problem for several American presidents. And Donald Trump’s interest in taking up talks reflects his responsiveness to public opinion in his own country. Americans consider Kim and North Korea a more serious threat than Russia and Vladimir Putin. But without tight coordination between President Trump and South Korea’s government, and without unity of purpose in the American delegation, or coherence from the president, any deal struck is likely to favor North Korea.
NOW WATCH: ‘Trump Says U.S. Will End Korean War Games’