Yesterday U.S. President Trump threw another hissy fit on the negotiations with North Korea:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 17:36 utc – 24 Aug 2018
I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula …
… Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place) …
… Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!
Pompeo was in Trump's office when Trump tweeted the above. Staff in the State Department was briefing foreign ambassadors on Pompeo's upcoming talks, planned for next week, when Trump stepped in. The decision was clearly a surprise.
Trump is suddenly binding the continuation of Korea talks to a trade deal with China. Such a deal is unlikely to happen anytime soon as China is convinced that it can win a tariff war, while the Trump administration overestimates the economic pressure it can create. That Trump now connects these two issues might mean that he has given up the "denuclearization" game.
Peter Lee, aka Chinahand, sees a larger plan behind the latest Trumping: to demonstrate to Kim Jong-un that China is hindering Kim's plans for a peace agreement and for economic development; then, when China will finally be pushed into open adversary status to the U.S., Kim Jong-un will have to chose and will end up in the U.S. camp. If that is really Trump's plan, which I doubt, then it is clearly bound to fail. North Korea would never end the relations with its long-term strategic partner for the dangerous vagueness of a nuclear treaty relations with the U.S. (see Iran, Libya).
It is more likely that Trump is punting here because there is no way he can get North Korea to denuclearize before signing an official peace agreement with it. Signing a peace agreement is not what the U.S. wants. With Korea at peace and on the way to re-unification, the U.S. would lose the justification for keeping U.S.troops in South Korea, its only major foothold on the east-Asian continent.
This position – denuclearization as precondition for talks about a peace agreement – has long been held by Secretary of State Pompeo. It is in contradiction to the Singapore Statement Trump and Kim Jong-un signed. The Statement included (twice) a sequence of three steps:
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
- The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
- The United States and DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
- Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
Even hawkish Korea analysts agree that this sequencing was the new, unprecedented core of the agreement:
For the first time in the history of negotiations, Washington essentially accepted, whether blindly or wittingly, Pyongyang’s wish list on sequencing: 1) normalization of bilateral relations, 2) establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, and then 3) “complete denuclearization.”
The "complete denuclearization" is not an agreed upon item. North Korea only committed to aspirational "work towards it". This is similar to Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in which the nuclear powers committed to "undertake to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to [..] nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament." That treaty was first signed in July 1968. 50 years on the nuclear powers who signed the NPT have still not fulfilled their commitment.
Despite the evident agreement in the Statement to follow a sequence of several steps, the Trump administration has been deceptive about it. After the Singapore Statement it again demanded from North Korea to take step 3 before the U.S. takes step 1 and 2. The administration also continues to falsely claim that North Korea agreed to "denuclearization". On August 28, when Secretary of State introduced a new special representative for North Korea, he said:
Steve [Biegun] will direct U.S. policy towards North Korea and lead our efforts to achieve President Trump’s goal of the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea, as agreed to by Chairman Kim Jong-un.
Chairman Kim Jong-un never agreed to such a thing.
(Interestingly Trump's tweet diverts from Pomeo's formulation by speaking of "the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula", not just "of North Korea".)
The U.S. media, even those outlets which oppose the Trump regime, support the falsehoods the administration is spreading. They fail to point out the obvious sequencing agreed to in the Singapore Statement and they fail to point out the aspirational character of the disarmament point. Instead of holding Trump's feet to the fire for breaking an agreement he himself signed just a few month ago, the New York Times, Washington Post and others seem to support his stand.
The Trump negotiations with North Korea were in the end probably just an attempt to get some fast success before the big clash with China over global supremacy finally enters a more serious stage.
Left hanging then are the Korean people and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea who had pushed for a final peace agreement with his norther brethren. Moon has plans for a new meeting with Kim and he wants to take some serious steps towards economic cooperation with the north. He will now surely come under U.S. pressure to stay away from such negotiations. The NYT rather blatantly declares:
How far Mr. Moon can go in pushing ahead with the many projects he has envisioned with the North, like reconnecting the two Koreas’ railways, depends on whether Washington and Pyongyang can agree on how to denuclearize the North.
Is Moon really locked in, as the Times assumes, or does he have his people backing and the courage to independently push on with his peace plans? If he does and succeeds, the Trump gambit with North Korea could end with a big loss for the U.S. position in South Korea.
Peter Lee is right when he sets the Korea talks into the big picture of the U.S. on its way to declare China an official adversary. There are small and big signs that a deeper conflict is developing.
This week the U.S. berated El Salvador for its decision to follow a One-China policy and for opening diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in Beijing while ending them with the Republic of China in Taiwan. The U.S. even threatens with economic consequences. But the U.S. itself took the same step in 1979 and as been holding on to the One-China policy ever since. That though may soon change.
Over the last few years Washington upgraded its relations with Taiwan. It built a gigantic new unofficial diplomatic outlet, the American Institute, in Taipei for a cool $250 million. While it is officially neither a consulate nor an embassy it is guarded by U.S. Marines and it will surely become the later when the U.S. finally pushes Taiwan to declare its independence from China. Beijing knows what is coming. China's industry currently depends on many computer chips produced in Taiwan. It launched a major program to become independent of those imports.
If Taiwan declares independence and invites the U.S. military to protect it, Beijing will have a serious problem. The move would be an attack on its sovereignty over all of China. It could try to invade Taiwan, a difficult endeavor, or at least to snatch away the islands next to China's mainland which are currently under Taipei's control. A recent Pentagon report to Congress discusses (pdf page 107) these options. The fight would then move into the diplomatic realm with Beijing pressing other countries to continue a One-China policy and to not accept Taiwan's independence, while the U.S. would press other countries to recognize an independent Taiwan. El Salvador is the first casualty in this fight.
Who in the White House is making these policies? Trump's tweets yesterday seem spontaneous, but are carefully formulated and obviously part of some larger plans. Are these Trump's plans? Or have the hawks -Bolton, Mattis, Pompeo- written these up to push Trump along their lines?