Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament

The Singapore summit lessened the chances of conflict in the short term, but the ultimate legacy of the summit could still be a march toward war.

If the President wants to use an arms build-up to advance arms control, he should take his cues from the Reagan record.

The agreement between President Trump and Kim Jong Un may be the start of denuclearization, or another failed effort brought down by North Korean cheating. But if the United States and North Korea are to have a new relationship, it must include the human rights dimension. There’s no reason to rehearse here in detail the astonishing nature of the regime’s tyranny. The size and vicious nature of its prison camp system, the punishment of family members for what the regime appears to believe is a blood taint, the number of deaths, the murder of Otto Warmbier—all are well known. It is the most brutal regime on Earth.  The first point to make is that raising human rights issues will not destroy the effort to change North Korea’s nuclear conduct. President George W. Bush raised freedom of religion repeatedly with Chinese leaders and that did not prevent a working relationship. President Reagan put human rights issues at the center of his relations with the Soviets, and that did not prevent remarkable progress in the relationship. As George Shultz wrote in his memoir Turmoil and Triumph,  Ronald Reagan and I both gave pride of place to human rights. He took up the subject at each of his meetings with Gorbachev and with most visitors from the Soviet Union to the Oval Office.  I pounded on the subject at every opportunity....” Indeed he did, making it the first subject at meetings rather than a throwaway in the final minutes. Yet relations with the Soviets prospered. The second point to make is that the only possible guarantee that a nuclear deal with North Korea will last over the years is some change in that society. As long as there is brutal one-man rule, the only thing needed to destroy any progress that has been made is a whim by that man. If and when there are others with influence—some day, one can dream, a journalist or legislator or mayor or clergyman—there can be something called “public opinion.” It exists even in dictatorships. Shultz described Reagan’s approach to the Soviets this way: “I’m not playing games. I’m not trying to push you into a corner publicly. I understand politicians even in your circumstances have to worry about how they look and don’t want to be pushed around in public.” So pressing for change in North Korea is not utopian and foolish idealism. Shultz noted that he and Reagan “increasingly emphasi[zed] to the Soviets the advantages to them, in the emerging knowledge and information age, of changing the way they dealt with their own people.” That is the kind of argument worth making, and to some extent the Trump administration has been making it to North Korea.  The third point is that how we act toward North Korea must reflect who we are as Americans, even if the impact over there is slight. That regime killed an American named Otto Warmbier, and not in the distant and murky past: next week is the first anniversary of his death. The Trump administration must recognize that among our nation’s greatest assets is our association with the cause of liberty. Working for the peaceful expansion of the frontiers of liberty is not a sucker’s game, or a disadvantage or liability, or a waste of resources. It is in very concrete ways one of the greatest advantages of the United States in world politics. It is ultimately what ties allies like Australia, South Korea, and Japan to us: the knowledge that what we seek for them is what we seek for ourselves—peace, security, and liberty.   The alternative is to leave those allies, and others, with the sense that our relations with North Korea exclude them and their interests, which we have forgotten. That is what happened in the Obama administration's nuclear agreement with Iran: close allies situated near Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel, came to believe their own interests were simply being forgotten. We saw in 2009 that the Obama administration viewed protests in Iran askance, not as the people's call for freedom but as an inconvenience to negotiations with the regime. Japan and other allies in Asia have critical security interests at stake in our relations with North Korea, and we should always give maintaining close and longstanding alliances pride of place as we undertake to open new relationships with hostile powers.  This is not to say that the President should return to Washington and suddenly blast human rights abuses in North Korea. That should be a steady, constant theme in American diplomacy, never abandoned and never diminished. When we did the nuclear deal with Libya in 2003, we did not take Qadhafi’s weapons and then turn around and commence a human rights onslaught meant to weaken or to bring down his regime. I believe we bit our tongues and actually said less than we should, but one can understand why: we were starting a relationship with Libya that we thought would lead in the medium run to a political opening there as the economy and society changed and pariah status was replaced by international engagement. But the goals and the American standards of conduct must be clear and our disgust at the Kim regime’s treatment of its people should always be equally clear. As in the Soviet case, that will not destroy our bilateral relationship; instead it will push the regime toward change and in any event will remind the regime who we are and what we believe. To put it another way, a nuclear agreement with North Korea is not a single transaction--or if it is, it will fail. It must be the start of an effort to change relations between our two countries, and to change the relationship between the regime in North Korea and both the international system and its own people. In that effort, a constant assertion of our belief in human rights is essential to success and to our own self-respect.     

By Hunter Marston Many analysts have noted the advantages Singapore provides as a setting for the upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. As Joshua Kurlantzick recently wrote on this blog, “Choosing Singapore reduces the expectations (slightly) of the summit, making it a (slightly) more low-key affair than if the two leaders had met in the DMZ or North Korea where the summit would have been even more dramatic.” The Singapore location, in this argument, may allow the two leaders more time to hammer out some kind of deal, while Singapore’s skillful diplomatic corps and experience with summit could help prevent any gaffes and possibly bridge any divides. But the location of the summit alone will not significantly impact the outcome of this high-stakes meeting; the choice of Singapore may not even have the modest impact on the summit that Kurlantzick predicts. Indeed, optics given Singapore’s neutral diplomatic position (it maintains diplomatic relations with Pyongyang and has close ties with the United States) are unlikely to dictate the summit’s end result. In fact, rather than lowering expectations for the summit, if anything the location significantly elevates North Korea’s prestige by providing an opportunity for the two leaders to meet on an equal footing. Moreover, Singapore’s openness to international media means that coverage of the event will be far more intensive than if the event had been held at the DMZ or in North Korea, where Kim’s regime would have some control of the optics, along with South Korea. From a logistical point of view, Singapore indeed presents an ideal place to hold such a weighty meeting between two bitter adversaries. In 2015, Singapore successfully hosted the historic meeting between former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou and Chinese president Xi Jinping, the first such face-to-face between Taiwanese and Chinese leaders. The city state has a wealth of experience in organizing high-profile conferences bringing together heads of state. The well-known annual Shangri-La Dialogue, which just wrapped up this past Sunday, this year featured a keynote address by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as notable speeches by U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen. Yet Singapore’s eminent status as an economic and diplomatic hub—enhanced by the rush of international journalists filling the country’s hotels—ups the ante for both sides and shifts the world’s attention onto city-state. Expectations are at a fever pitch this week, as U.S. foreign policy analysts have weighed in with a litany of op-eds outlining the prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough – or failure leading to war. As Bruce Jones of the Brookings Institution warns, “The risks of war are higher now than before the drive to the summit.” As Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law School points out, by denigrating the efforts of past presidential administrations, Trump has significantly raised expectations that he will secure a better deal and in so doing has reduced the likelihood of an agreement that favors the United States. Moreover, the divide in perceptions between Washington and Pyongyang remains acute: each side insists on its own understanding of what a satisfactory outcome for a summit would look like. The White House has doubled down on its definition of “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.” But the North has so far refrained from embracing this point. As such, when the two leaders show up to the negotiating table this week, there are no guardrails for the road ahead. As policy analysts have noted, lower-level meetings typically lay the groundwork for such a meeting to finalize certain details by way of a formal agreement. But without certain parameters for the leadership summit in place ahead of the discussion (not to mention the diligent policy work that must take place behind the scenes in a gutted State Department), Trump and Kim may find themselves with little guidance. If the event were to be held on the Korean Peninsula, it would entail certain tradeoffs. If it took place in Pyongyang, Trump would have to bestow Kim the honor of an unprecedented official visit (Bill Clinton had considered such a trip in 2000 but decided against it). If the event took place on the Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ), the focus would remain on the Koreas as host nations with the United States as a foreign interloper. As laid out above, Singapore presents unique advantages for the meeting: world-class security and intelligence personnel, quality infrastructure and luxury hotels, and above all a neutral political atmosphere. Nevertheless, instead of reducing expectations or lowering the potential for drama, Singapore’s attractiveness as a venue for such a high-stakes meeting only elevates the nature of the summit and intensifies the pressure cooker for high-wire diplomacy. Yet few are more adept at controlling the media spotlight than President Trump. That fact may grant some reassurance of the United States’ advantage. But anything could happen with this unprecedented meeting between two of the most unpredictable personalities in world politics. Hunter Marston (@hmarston4) is an independent Southeast Asia analyst in Washington, DC. He co-authored a chapter on Singapore in a forthcoming volume, Asia’s Quest for Balance: China’s Rise and Balancing in the Indo-Pacific (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

Among the possible contenders mentioned for the summit between U.S. President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un—Sweden, the Korean DMZ, Mongolia, Switzerland, as well as much more unlikely possibilities like North Korea itself—Singapore was probably the right choice for the event, and ultimately not such a surprising one. The city-state’s diplomatic corps and security and intelligence personnel are highly respected globally and shown repeatedly that they can host a major summit without allowing any significant security or intelligence slip-ups. The city state indeed has for decades hosted a wide range of regional security summits for Southeast Asian states, and, increasingly summits involving officials from across the world. Singaporean officials also have handled, many high-profile bilateral meetings, like the meeting in 2015 between Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou. The country has an extensive array of hotels and other facilities whose staff are used to preparing for major events with tight security. The wealthy city-state also has said that it will assume some of the costs of the summit, a bonus that some other possible choices like Mongolia would not have been able to add. The city-state also is much closer physically to North Korea than other potential sites like Switzerland or Sweden, which makes it easier for the North Koreans to travel. Yet it is not as remote as Mongolia, which possibly would have struggled to host an event of this potential importance. Just as importantly, Singapore—like a number of countries in Southeast Asia—long has maintained ties with North Korea, as well as close links to the United States. Singapore has had diplomatic ties with Pyongyang for more than forty years, and had trade relations, like many Southeast Asian states, until the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, in Malaysia last year and the Trump administration’s campaign of applying greater pressure on the North through further economic sanctions. Before 2016, North Koreans also could travel to Singapore visa-free, which allowed some North Korean elites, including probably ruling party officials, to visit the city-state for services like medical care and shopping, and give them some familiarity with Singapore. Before that killing, and the ramping up of international sanctions on the North for its nuclear program, many Southeast Asian states appeared to be soliciting greater trade ties with Pyongyang, which was beginning to reform its economy and invite in outside investment. Last November, Singapore suspended trade with North Korea. Still, this history of links may make Kim Jong-un and other North Korean leaders relatively comfortable with a summit in Singapore. China and Singapore also have longstanding, if sometimes wary, relations, and Beijing probably preferred Singapore to a summit in Mongolia, Sweden, or Switzerland. Meanwhile, although Singapore is not an official U.S. treaty ally, it is probably, at this point, the United States’s closest security partner in Southeast Asia, as well as a major trading partner. U.S. officials, throughout multiple administrations, generally have a high degree of trust in Singaporean intelligence, political leaders, and diplomats, and have worked closely with Singapore on a wide range of strategic issues. In addition, as some other commentators have noted, choosing Singapore reduces the expectations (slightly) of the summit, making it a (slightly) more low-key affair than if the two leaders had met in the DMZ or North Korea where the summit would have been even more dramatic.

Successful denuclearization will hinge on rigorous on-the-ground inspections and closing the gap between North Korea and the United States on what areas any agreement should cover.

While the collapse of the Donald Trump-Kim Jung Un summit should cause the president to reconsider how to prepare for head of state summits, it should not alter the Trump administration’s strategic objective of complete and permanent denuclearization of North Korea for several important reasons. The leverage of sanctions is greatest now. Since the end of the Cold War and the rise of the global economy, we have entered a new era of arms control/non-proliferation policy where the leverage to stop these programs and reverse them comes from multilateral sanctions. Multilateral sanctions have reached an important apex with North Korea, with increased Chinese support for the Trump administration’s sanctions policy in the UN Security Council and with significant success in encouraging countries across the globe to diplomatically isolate North Korea. Arms control dependent on the persuasion of sanctions limits the utility of phased negotiations. As sanctions weaken in response to step by step moves, sanctions pressure decreases just as the slow burn approach to negotiations has to deal with the final phases of complete denuclearization. A sanctions dependent arms control policy sharply limits the effectiveness of step by step negotiations or time-bound constraints, one of the major concerns with the time bound limits of the Iran agreement. Furthermore, the nuclear genie is out of the North Korean bottle and a freeze does not diminish that threat. North Korea is a nuclear state with both medium range and long-range ballistic missiles and an estimated 10-60 warhead capability. The only remaining question is whether they can reliably put a warhead on a missile — a capability that North Korea says it already has. Freezing missile tests and nuclear weapons tests at this point does not limit North Korean capabilities, which currently threaten our allies, our assets and personnel in the region, and the U.S. homeland. Consequently, a freeze also does not deserve to be rewarded with sanctions relief or diplomatic recognition. The U.S. unilaterally removed all of its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea during the George H.W. Bush administration. North Korea is the only non-member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the region and among only four outliers to the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime globally. North Korea is the country that is introducing nuclear weapons onto the peninsula, violating its own past and now reiterated commitment for a nuclear free Korean peninsula. The alternative to complete denuclearization is not simply war, if the goal fails. Along with defense and deterrence measures, the U.S. can continue its policy to pressure and isolate North Korea economically and diplomatically. It can continue to clamp down on its proliferation and other black market activities, which are important sources of hard currency and, thus, denying Kim Jung Un of his equally important goal of developing North Korea economically. North Korea is also not Libya, Iraq or Ukraine. North Korea has publicly stated that their pursuit of nuclear weapons is to keep the Kim regime from the fate of others: Qaddafi, who gave up nuclear weapons only to be killed in an allied attack; Saddam Hussein whom the North Koreans believe was successfully invaded because he did not have nuclear weapons; or Ukraine who gave back nuclear weapons to Russia for promises of sovereignty only to have that promise to collapse with the Russian invasion. North Korea is in a very different situation and, in fact, can be secure without nuclear weapons. It has superpowers on its borders that can provide security guarantees and can offer a nuclear umbrella to counter U.S. extended deterrence with South Korea. North Korea has the potential to leverage a relationship with both China and Russia as a deterrent against U.S. interference. One of China’s principal objectives is to avert a regime collapse in North Korea and a refugee influx on its border. Russia, North Korea’s original mentor before the collapse of the Soviet Union, has also demonstrated its interests in working with the Kim Jung Un regime. These potential security guarantees plus the economic development incentives that these superpowers plus South Korea, Japan and the U.S. can provide, make complete denuclearization not an unreasonable objective. While reversing a nuclear weapons program is very difficult, it is not impossible. The U.S. and the global community have achieved this goal in the past with several countries under the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime over the years. Anything short of complete denuclearization does not solve the current security threats of a nuclear North Korea to the U.S. or our regional allies.

The 1986 meeting in Iceland between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was like none other. It offers helpful context for a potential U.S.-North Korea arms control summit.

On Thursday, the White House canceled the highly-anticipated June 12 summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. Despite will on all sides for the summit to proceed, a fundamental disagreement on the roadmap to denuclearization looms large.

Sungtae (Jacky) Park is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. A version of this piece was first published on CSIS PacNet here. As the top-level summit between the United States and North Korea nears, policy analysts have been expressing skepticism about the Trump administration’s goal of complete denuclearization of North Korea and calling for tempered expectations and objectives. They argue that North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons program that Kim Jong Un sees as critical to the survival of his regime and that Pyongyang will use the summit and negotiations to buy time and loosen sanctions while making limited concessions. While I am a pessimist myself, I worry that cognitive bias is leading to excessive pessimism. An outcome that experts might find satisfactory, while falling short of complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement (CVID), might be possible. Cognitive bias #1: Bad guys do it better The first factor that affects analyses of North Korea is a belief that the North Koreans are brilliant manipulators and strategists, while U.S. officials are incompetent and regularly being duped. The notion that “bad guys do it better” seems to be ingrained in every aspect of the U.S. policy community’s view of the world, whether in discussions about North Korea, Russia, China, or Iran. Consistent with this view, the Washington policy establishment has accused Donald Trump of being manipulated into a summit with Kim and pursuing the unrealistic goal of complete denuclearization. Ironically, Trump himself has accused previous U.S. presidents of being “outplayed” by the North Koreans and has pledged to be different. Is this perception true? Many analysts have argued that the United States has had an increasingly dysfunctional national security decision-making process since the end of the Cold War, but a working process does exist. The separation of powers in the U.S. government often leads to confusion and delays in policy implementation, but Congress also brings a level of oversight to the executive branch. The shift in power at the White House from one party to another sometimes brings changes in policy, but it also prevents foreign affairs from being dominated by a single school of thought. North Korea’s policy process remains a black box, but it is hard to imagine that it functions properly in a setting where officials risk being purged if they say the wrong thing. Moreover, while North Korean officials have access to outside information, they do not have the same level of information freedom that exists in the United States and are working in an ideological framework into which they were indoctrinated as children. North Korea’s intelligence apparatus is brutal, but North Koreans do not have intellectual and technological resources to match those of the U.S. government. There is also no accountability in North Korea, and Kim makes decisions with his close associates and sycophantic advisors. While North Korea has a clear strategy in negotiations with the United States, it is dealing with as much uncertainty as the United States. As a result, diplomacy with North Korea is not necessarily a rigged game in which Kim Jong Un is pursuing an exceptionally clever strategy. Both sides are playing the game partially blindfolded and a satisfactory, if not ideal, outcome that includes North Korea’s denuclearization in some form should not be discounted. Cognitive bias #2: Attributing the current situation to a single, fixed intent The second cognitive bias is the belief that North Korean leaders have made and stuck to a single, fixed choice, instead of having kept as many options available (hedging) or having made disparate decisions at multiple inflection points throughout the history of the U.S.-North Korea nuclear conflict. Korea watchers generally believe that the current crisis reflects North Korea’s unwavering desire to obtain nuclear weapons. However, no one will know what happened with all previous nuclear agreements with North Korea until archives on both sides are open to researchers. Counterfactuals are impossible to prove, and no one can be sure what would have happened if the United States and North Korea had made different choices at different junctures in the nuclear conflict. Yet, the fact that the complex and never-ending debate over how and why the Agreed Framework and later agreements failed exists suggests that North Korean decision-making has been far more complicated than understood in the United States. The assertion, then, that Kim Jong Un will never give up his nuclear weapons program and will inevitably cheat on any agreement is flawed, as it is not clear that North Korea has always had a single fixed position on nuclear weapons. With the right incentives and disincentives, the United States might be able to sway Kim’s decision-making. A counterargument could be made that Kim Jong Un is coldly rational and does hold a single, fixed position because he views nuclear weapons as the key to his survival, especially after witnessing the fall of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who completely gave up his nuclear weapons program, only to be killed in 2011 in a rebellion protected by a Western no-fly zone. Yet, if Kim were truly rational and faced with “the existential choice between survival and nuclear status,” as noted by Scott Snyder, due to internal and external pressure of varying nature, then a satisfactory level of denuclearization, by logic, should not be discounted. Cognitive bias #3: Past patterns must continue The final cognitive bias is the tendency to conclude that past failures with North Korea mean that current diplomacy is also unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome, even though a number of factors are different this time. To begin with, leader-to-leader diplomacy has never been tried. Conventionally, diplomats lay the groundwork, prepare the details, and then have top leaders meet and sign relevant documents at a summit. But the North Korean political system is uniquely centralized and personalized, meaning that only the top leader can exercise true flexibility on policy issues. Kim Jong Un likely is also cautious about airing his true intentions because even the most brutal dictator has to consider the effects of his words and actions on domestic legitimacy, particularly among elites. Hence, leader-to-leader diplomacy might be the only way to gauge Kim’s inner thinking and reach a solution. In terms of regime security, Kim Jong Un is facing far more pressure compared to his predecessors. Kim would like to remain in power for decades, perhaps for more than half a century. Yet, he is facing rapid marketization of the North Korean economy and increased information flow within the country that he has managed to co-opt, but not halt. This comes at a time when an unprecedented level of sanctions has hurt Pyongyang (despite some recent signs that the Chinese might be loosening their grip). In addition, the North Koreans seem to fear that the Trump administration might launch a military strike, particularly in light of talk about a “bloody nose” strike. At the elite level, Kim and his generation are more aware of the outside world compared to their predecessors. North Korea’s first generation of leadership under Kim Il Sung consisted of revolutionaries who believed they were on the winning side of the Korean conflict. The second generation under Kim Jong Il was indoctrinated in socialism but saw the socialist world collapse, along with its model of development. They did not have the right education and skills to adapt North Korea to changing circumstances. The current generation under Kim Jong Un was educated in Western schools and is the most aware when it comes to the West. This generation likely is the most willing to offer nuclear weapons as bargaining chips for aid and Western technology that might be necessary to sustain the regime for decades. In terms of alliance policy coordination, this is the first time the United States and South Korea are truly in lockstep on North Korea. During the 1994 crisis, Bill Clinton clashed with South Korea’s hardline president, Kim Young-sam. Clinton was briefly in sync with the dovish Kim Dae-jung administration from 1998, but South Korea’s progressive governments and the Bush administration clashed from 2001, while there was minimal diplomatic opening under Barack Obama, Lee Myung-bak, and Park Geun-hye. Unlike previous diplomatic phases, U.S. and South Korean leaders are coordinating well. Take all precautions, but be on the lookout for creative possibilities The United States and South Korea should not embrace North Korea with open arms or buy everything that Kim Jong Un is trying to sell. The Trump administration should take all precautions in negotiations that might follow the summit with Kim. Even if a deal emerges, it could be an imperfect one with much ambiguity. Nevertheless, diplomats and Korea watchers should be open to creative diplomatic possibilities, lest they fail to be noticed due to excessive pessimism.

In an op-ed recently published in the Hill, I write about the findings of the fourth annual Council of Councils Report Card on International Cooperation. No danger weighs as heavily on the minds of leading global thinkers as the specter of nuclear war. That message rings clear in the fourth annual Report Card on International Cooperation, released Monday by the Council of Councils, an international network of twenty-nine prominent think tanks. These findings take on greater salience as President Trump enters a showdown this spring with the world’s two greatest proliferation threats: North Korea and Iran. The world is adrift in troubles. Besides nuclear weapons, the leaders of the Council of Councils institutes ranked interstate war, transnational terrorism, internal violence, and climate change as top global threats. Each of these dangers can seem intractable. Read the full op-ed here.