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The language in the Panmunjom Declaration (“complete denuclearization”) doesn’t have a clearly understood, agreed meaning. It serves to obscure differences, not bridge them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just not sufficient by itself.
That ambiguous formula serves as a ticket to a further conversation. But it’s not a substitute for that conversation.
Listen to NSC Asia hand Matt Pottinger’s remarks from Thursday afternoon, starting around the one-minute mark: lots of summit preparations so far, but the “working-level dialogue” to establish a viable agenda has not taken place.https://twitter.com/i/moments/1000485670773710848 …
Going by the public statements of high-level North Korean and US officials so far, there hasn’t been much movement from their fundamentally incompatible starting positions. A mutually acceptable formula has yet to be identified.
Finding such a formula isn’t impossible, but rushing into a summit without one seems quite unwise. Not everything can be handled purely at the highest levels!
The latest, conciliatory message from the North Korean 1st Vice FM suggests that a summit meeting could be a “good start” of a “phased” process.pic.twitter.com/KVXukiO9q8
I take that to mean that they would be pleased to have a largely ceremonial summit, followed by substantive, working-level talks. A series of partial, step-by-step agreements could follow.
This is similar to the language in the PMJ declaration about the two Koreas advancing toward disarmament in phases. (Conventional? Nuclear? Other? It didn’t say.)
But as @NarangVipin pointed out earlier, US officials continue to speak in terms of a very different set of expectations: getting North Korea to commit to CVID up front.https://twitter.com/narangvipin/status/1000141565124382720?s=21 …
If you put last week’s statements by US officials under a microscope, you can detect hints of softening at the margins, eg, Trump’s refusal to rule out something short of a completed CVID process before compensating the NKs.
But that hint of softening isn’t tantamount to accepting the idea of a phased process. It sounds like (modestly) phased implementation of a single, comprehensive agreement.
More importantly, this dispute about process cloaks a deep disagreement about substance: whether NK must disarm unilaterally, or in concert with the rest of the world.
FWIW, I don’t anticipate reaching any agreement on that point. The entire point of a phased approach is that you don’t actually have to. You can find other things to agree on, such as fissile-material production.
Perhaps that’s what Kim Gye Gwan was driving at when he wrote that solving even just one problem in a phased manner would improve relations.
I’ll end by giving the floor to Jim Clapper. It’s past time to think more broadly. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/opinion/sunday/clapper-north-korea.html …pic.twitter.com/ReBkgeDpP5
Why is this "the" problem? He's just stating the obvious. Isn't "the" problem the fact that both parties feel they need to threaten unspeakable violence in order to reach some kind of accommodation?
Heading into a high-stakes negotiation without any sort of a shared vision for a mutually acceptable outcome is a problem, in my view.
If that were obvious, perhaps more people would share that view.
As for threats of force in international relations... I don’t think that will go away anytime soon, unfortunately. One step at a time!
Of course not. But even threats, as a form of communication, don't work if the other side doesn't understand why you're doing it and what you expect in reply.
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