Term Limits

Donald Trump’s “impulse diplomacy” drives many in his cabinet and many more in Congress on both sides of the aisle, nuts. He embraces long-term enemies as friends, showering them with compliments and photo ops, while castigating long-standing allies – even allies upon whom the United States has relied upon as global security partners – as bitter enemies worthy of personal insults and glaring inconsistencies. Not to mention going out of his way to alienate most of the rest of the world with his trade wars, withdrawal from multinational treaties and constant denigration of so many political and leaders who simply disagree with him.

While the world seems to focus on the on-again, off-again next round of Trump-Putin meetings, now strategically postponed until after the upcoming midterm elections, we ought to be looking very carefully at the relative failure of our “denuclearization” talks with North Korea.

Already, the People’s Republic of China has assumed that she no longer needs to abide by the United Nations trade embargo against North Korea (because of nuclear and missile tests and its nuclear program), that détente with the United States is sufficient to allow a heavy increase in commerce across the Sino–Korean Friendship Bridge or China–North Korea Friendship Bridge (pictured above) – a double vehicular/railroad bridge across the Yalu River connecting the cities of Dandong in China and Sinuiju of North Korea. North Korean ships are also accepting cargo transfers from Chinese ships with no regard for the embargo.

Despite symbolic moments, like the repatriation of the remains of U.S. soldiers held in North Korea since the Korean war in the early 1950s – heavily complimented by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence – virtually nothing is happening on the “big picture” – denuclearization of North Korea. Satellite photos show a likelihood that the North’s nuclear weapons plants are still very much in operation.

However, it is no secret in military circles that North Korea had pretty much completed all of its desired long-range missile and nuclear weapons testing; the North’s engineers have all the information they need (at least for now). In April, the North issued this press release: “As the weaponisation of nuclear weapons has been verified, it is not necessary for us to conduct any more nuclear tests or test launches of mid- and long range missiles or ICBMs.”

In fact, their last mega-blast in the fall of 2017 – suggesting their capacity to deliver perhaps a hydrogen bomb – caused so much damage in both North Korea and China that it actually caused an embarrassment to both nations. So as Trump and Pence compliment the North’s not testing any more of these mega-weapon system, they fail to mention that this policy was set long before the June 12^th Singapore Trump/Kim meeting.

The United States has long-clung to a notion that the target “denuclearization” as only applying North Korea (with a hint that the United States might allow that concept to apply to the entire Korean Peninsula). American goals have always focused on the removal/destruction of the North’s stockpile of nukes, the disassembly of all related manufacturing and research centers and a complete and open system of on-site inspections across the North creating indisputable proof that her nuclear capacity has ended. This is the cardinal understanding, presented in numerous speeches across the Trump administration (including Trump himself), and the mandate as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo implements face-to-face negotiations with his Northern counterpart, Ri Yong Ho. But there is little of any evidence that this is an achievable goal.

Over the years, as any U.S. administration that has sought the same result, Kim Jong-up has equated giving up his nuclear weapons program with papering his own demise. He has wiggled out of every commitment towards this goal his country has ever made. The North’s vision of denuclearization has up to now been limited to (a) sitting down with other nuclear powers as an equal, and (b) negotiating global nuclear disarmament or at least disarming both itself and the United States in the entire region remotely near North Korea (including South Korea, Japan, etc.).

The August 5^th Los Angeles Times summarizes how little progress has been made on this key issue and how deeply the North seems to have dug in its heels: “President Trump has again exchanged friendly letters with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, even as his top diplomat attempted this weekend in Asia to fortify international pressure on the nuclear-armed country to give up its weaponry.

“Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo on Saturday [8/4] smiled and shook hands with his North Korean counterpart at a regional conference in Singapore, just before the letter was handed over. Minutes later, with Pompeo gone, the North Korean foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, unleashed a stinging critique of Washington and the sort of demands that Pompeo came to deliver.

“The back-and-forth illustrated the tricky — and slow — diplomacy the administration is tackling since Trump’s summit with Kim nearly two months ago, as it seeks to force North Korea to get rid of its nuclear arsenal.

“Kim agreed to ‘denuclearize,’ the Trump administration has said, in what it portrays as a major diplomatic triumph. But North Korea has yet to take any significant steps to that end… The State Department said the letter from Trump to Kim was in response to what Trump said was a ‘nice’ missive from the North Korean leader earlier in the week.”

“After Pompeo exchanged greetings with Ri at the conference of foreign ministers from Southeast Asia, Trump’s letter was handed over by Sung Kim, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, who has been a key figure in the Washington-Pyongyang negotiations this year.

“‘We should meet again soon,’ Pompeo told Ri, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert… ‘I agree,’ Ri responded. ‘There are many productive conversations to be had.’… Yet minutes later, and after Pompeo had left the conference for meetings in nearby Indonesia, Ri took the Trump administration to task for its insistent demands… ‘What is alarming,’ Ri said, ‘is the insistent moves manifested within the U.S. to go back to the old — far from its leader’s intention.’

“The North Korean leadership prefers to focus on Trump’s vaguely worded and easily fungible requirements, rather than the detailed and specific criteria set out by U.S. diplomats and experienced negotiators now trying to put the Trump-Kim commitment into concrete, verifiable terms.” Getting to a U.S.-acceptable accord on point, at least as the Trump administration has pledged, is wildly inconsistent with how the North interprets the term, “denuclearization.”

Arrogant impulse diplomacy, combined with an utter disregard for the history of prior U.S./U.N. efforts, does not work. It never has. Claiming victory, Trump 101, in the face of very little bordering on nothing does not make the world a safer place and does not remove nukes from North Korea. The only tangible political accomplishment so far has been to elevate a brutal dictator (who still believes that having nukes is what keeps him safe) to a political “equal” by having a sitting U.S. president engage in personal negotiations with him. North Korea 1, United States 0. Whatever the Trump administration is likely to achieve with the North, if anything, is exceptionally likely to fall dramatically short of what they have said is the minimum they would ever accept… and Kim will be able to restart his nuclear program at the drop of a hat.

Trump’s claims are failing fast. Rumors abound that there is a “strong possibility” that there will be a second Trump/Kim meeting at which Trump will make concessions to Kim only Trump can make… and later claim some sort of victory that no other American president can assert. And guess who is sitting on the sidelines, waiting joyfully for that massive American commitment to put back its most powerful weapons from the region? Yup, China! That they have just tested their first “hypersonic missile,” fast enough to penetrate most existing anti-missile systems, says it all.  They want the United States out of their claimed sphere of influence, and Donald Trump just might be the man to hand that to them.

I’m Peter Dekom, and “those who do not study history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.”