After much anticipation of a signing ceremony between the U.S. and North Korea, President Donald Trump and North Leader Kim Jong-un left Hanoi with no deal. It was a move applauded even by President Trump’s harshest critics, as it became clear that the U.S. and North Korea, despite two high-profile summits, hold very different views on what a ‘good deal’ means for each side.
Cipher Brief Expert and former CIA Chief of Station Dan Hoffman was in Hanoi for the talks and filed this dispatch with The Cipher Brief before heading back to the U.S.
The Cipher Brief: Give us a sense of the mood on the ground when it was announced that there would be no deal out of Hanoi. How was it perceived?
Hoffman: The president walked away from what would have been a flawed deal. Kim Jong-un was willing to give up the Yongbyon Nuclear Facility, a sprawling facility over 3 square miles, with slightly less than 400 buildings. I've heard that some arms control experts estimate that it would take not months, but years, to confirm that it's be denuclearized. So, in return for just that, Kim Jong-un wanted, apparently, full sanction relief. Which obviously the U.S. wasn't prepared or interested in doing.
My personal assessment is that there's some good connectivity here for future discussions and we've made it clear what we need from Kim Jong-un, but he's going to have to earn the next summit with some real negotiation with lower-level subject matter experts to set that stage.
The Cipher Brief: In D.C., there was a lot of talk about a fear that president Trump was going to agree to something that wasn't in the U.S.’ best interest and further talk around the idea that by having the talks, the U.S. is normalizing the issue of North Korea being a nuclear state. Were those concerns echoed in Hanoi this week?
Hoffman: Yes, on the first point. Let me take the first point just quickly because the president made it clear that he wasn't in any rush. He said North Korea's not testing, and that's something that the U.S. has wanted. North Korea hasn't tested its nuclear weapons since September 2017. What the U.S. gave up, and it is a big deal, is it gave up military exercises and that does have an impact on U.S. military readiness, but the president was pretty clear all along that he wasn't in a rush to do anything here. I thought that set the right tone.
I also kind of personally wonder whether Kim Jong-un was calling an audible after watching the testimony in D.C. this week by Michael Cohen and thinking, maybe the president does want a deal more than he otherwise would have and I'll low ball him with just Yongbyon, and we'll see if he agrees to it. I don't know, that's speculation on my part.
On the issue of normalization, I think North Korea might want to be placed in the same category as India and Pakistan, where they're just established nuclear powers.
And we’ve seen over the last couple of days, the risks of two nuclear-armed enemies shooting each other's fighter aircraft out of the sky and the risk that might cause to the planet. But I have always felt like if you want to get to denuclearization, you're going to have to make a pit stop at arms control first, where the U.S. will freeze North Korea's capabilities and then start taking it apart piece by piece. It's certainly not going to happen all at once. I would say that arms control is kind of a stop on the way. The U.S. isn’t going to accept that North Korea has in perpetuity, a nuclear weapons capability coupled with ballistic missiles, but clearly, it's not like you can remove all that with a magic wand, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of negotiation.
The Cipher Brief: On the issue of India and Pakistan, we saw they're tamping down tensions on both sides, both sides saying they are willing to demonstrate some sort of good faith effort to try to deescalate the situation, which is obviously causing us all to breathe a small sigh of relief but if you contrast that with North Korea's past behavior, I don't think anyone necessarily would expect that kind of thing would happen. That said, recent behavior by Kim Jong-un has suggested at least, that he's willing to do some things publicly to show that he can be a responsible actor. Is there a sentiment there that North Korea could ever be a responsible actor on that stage?
Hoffman: I don't know if I'd go that far. There are three concerns with North Korea. First, just the fact that they have the nuclear weapons there, that represents a threat to the region and beyond. And I think he's demonstrated at times he's a rational actor, chess player. He went through the fire and fury stage launching missile tests and nuclear tests, and then he delivered this opening gambit during the Olympics in January 2018 and indicated he'd be willing to talk to the United States and South Korea, and then he mounted a real diplomatic offensive in the region and with Russia and sought some sanctions relief in return for something, giving up something in terms of his massive arms build up. I think for most of us, in the intelligence community, it certainly strained logic that Kim Jong-un would build up this ICBM and nuclear capability only to barter it away for food and energy and a more productive relationship, economic relationship with the international community. So, I think the outstanding question is, are sanctions really a leverage? It's a stick but is that going to be enough for Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear program? I don't know.
At CIA, we made judgements with low, medium, and high levels of confidence and maybe you had a medium to high level of confidence that North Korea wouldn't denuclearize, but at the end of the day, the president showed up here to ascertain Kim's intentions, and again, the connectivity is good because we'll get a lot of reflections, Kim's view of the negotiations and what he might or might not be willing to accept. I think those are all good things. At the end of the day they still have their nuclear capability, they still are a threat and maybe Kim is thinking he can outlast us, as far as the sanctions are concerned. Russia, China and South Korea, are all interested in economic relationships with North Korea. Russia and China have implemented the sanctions but not fully.
We'll just have to see how that shakes out. One other thing I would just say is, the president, walking away from this deal, could have implications for his summit with the Chinese coming up in Mar-a-Lago where the president has made it clear that he is not just going to go for a deal for the sake of a deal. He's going to be looking for the best deal he can get.
Read more from Dan Hoffman in The Cipher Brief
