North and Sound Korea have held their first high-level meeting in two years – agreeing to send North Korean athletes to the upcoming Olympics in the South Korean resort of Pyeonchang — and to reopen a military hotline.
It’s a welcome warming to the nuclear chill on the Korean Peninsula, thanks to the rhetorical smack down over the size of nuclear buttons in Washington and Pyongyang. The Cipher Brief asked John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA, to opine on the art of the possible, adapting the conversation below.
Fundamentally, this is a good thing. One of the things we have to realize is it’s their peninsula, and in my experience dealing with the South Koreans often in the past, they know more about what’s going on in the North than we do. They have family ties, they have the culture and the language, and they have channels that we may not even know about.
I think the South is eager to take some of the heat out of the rhetoric and the exchanges up until now. Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, has for a long time—including during his campaign—advocated a reach-out to North Korea for exactly that purpose.
On the North side, it’s hard to know their motives here, but I think it’s a combination of things. They’ll be looking for some opening with the South, possibly looking to some greater investment in the North, which has been pretty much cut off…perhaps some aid.
To a degree, Kim Jong-un realizes that we are quite serious about sanctions and about wanting to halt or slow or freeze or in some way limit his nuclear program. I think we’ve gotten his attention on that.
Interestingly, President Donald Trump has spoken positively about the talks. For us, a desirable outcome would be one in which the South does not give away anything particularly important, especially on the nuclear front, and at the same time establishes a channel of communication with the North, and keeps us fully informed of everything that happened there.
It would also be a good outcome from our point of view if after this, the North took the temperature down from its rhetoric a bit—and it would be smart for us to do the same thing. Clearly, they’re not eager to give up their nuclear program, and the idea that we can somehow talk them out of it is a bit fantastical.
On the other hand, you never know what happens once you begin diplomacy, and once you actually listen to the other side and see where they’re coming from and weigh their interests against your interests and what you’re prepared to give versus what they’re prepared to give.
As Churchill once said, “jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” You never know where it’s going to lead, and therefore it’s worth talking—even if the talks are mostly about process.
I recall meeting some years ago with Kim Dae-Jung, who was then the president of South Korea and really the originator of the idea that has come to be known as the “Sunshine Policy.” His view, which I think Moon shares, is if you engage with the North and you get them to accept a certain degree of infiltration of Western ideas, influence, and investment, that over time you will open their eyes a bit to the fecklessness of remaining as isolated from the world and as hostile as they typically have been.
That idea has yet to be fully tested. Dae-Jung got started down that path, but the Bush administration in roughly the year 2000, 2001, was skeptical of it and discouraged him, so it didn’t get a full test. Moon is trying to test it.
I don’t think the South is going to give away anything here that will distress us.
What are you keenly focused on here as you watch events unfold?
I’m focused as much on the United States as anything else. This is an opportunity for us to exploit if we play it well. I’m also focused on China. I don’t think we have a full understanding of what the United States has been doing with China.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at one point had some interesting things to say about the depth and extent of his diplomacy with China. I recall him saying, for example, that we had somehow given the Chinese assurances that if there was ever a collapse in the North and we had to secure nuclear weapons, perhaps jointly with the Chinese, that we would not attempt to stay there and occupy the place. If that was not just a diplomatic slip, then that is rather revealing.
So I’m focused on the United States and what we’re doing as a backdrop to reinforce these talks, perhaps in concert with the Chinese. It would be good if we were attempting to influence the tenor of what the South does, while talking to the Chinese about similarly influencing the North.
Simply the fact that the two are talking is of great interest to me because I’ve seen that happen in the past, and I’ve seen some progress come about as a result of it, though the North was never as far advanced along the nuclear missile path as it is today, so that’s the big new factor in this that makes it a bit hard to calculate.
I think it makes the North more confident in negotiations. They’ve pretty much demonstrated that—they’re not quite there yet, with an ICBM… Based on the test results that I’ve seen and public reporting, they have considerable work to do on things like shielding the re-entry vehicle against the heat of the atmosphere, and guidance systems and all of that.
But they have, as best we can tell, functioning nuclear weapons. The question is the accuracy and effectiveness with which they can deliver them. So they’re so much further along that path now that the successful end is in sight, and I think they would come into this with a degree of confidence that they haven’t had in the past—though somewhat chastened, I think, by the rough approach the United States has taken to all of this.
None of us like the kind of bullying language and tweets Trump has put out—I think he’s been excessive on that score—but at the same time, if you’re Kim Jong-un, you have to wonder about exactly what’s going to happen here if he continues on this path. It’s complicated. He’s more confident, and yet there’s an element of uncertainty in his relationships here with the South and with the United States, that has been increased I think over the last several months.
Recall that the South has also toughened up its approach. For a long time, the South was objecting to beefing up missile defenses on the territory of South Korea, and Moon walked back from that and has said we’ll go ahead with that. From both the South and the United States, Kim has seen a fairly firm posture…but we always have to add there, he has increased his ability to threaten us.
So it’s a bit of a standoff, and that’s one reason why these talks are a good thing: it’s a break in the clouds here.
This post has been updated to reflect the outcome of the talks on Tuesday.
