Cautious optimism after the inter-Korean summit

The inter-Korean summit this past weekend was remarkable. Only twice before have the two Korean leaders met, and never before did a North Korean leader come to the South. The event was filled with moving ceremony and pageantry. The two leaders shook hands dramatically over the border. Even the food was choreographed to come from different parts of Korea to symbolize national unity. A final declaration was reached that is filled with inspiring talk about unity and reconciliation.

But many thorny problems lie ahead. South Korea and the US have struck deals with North Korea before. They have always fallen apart. That was not solely because of North Korea – the US has acted in bad faith as well – but much of it was.

North Korea has a long history of lying and deception. Strategic trust is very low. North Korea’s promises are now routinely discounted as worth nothing more than the paper they are printed on. And that will be the likely response to this weekend’s events as well.

Going forward, the biggest hurdles are pinning North Korea down on specifics and then verifying their compliance. This will require inspectors entering North Korea and accessing its nuclear sites. In the past, this has been greatly resisted. But at this point, no one will believe North Korea is disarming if foreign observers are not allowed in. Any North Korean commitment without verification is simply not credible.

Here is the point where Friday’s ‘Panmunjom Declaration’ falls down. Its rhetoric is soaring, as was the imagery. But there is no plan, no road map. Nor did North Korea make any specific concession – for example, to turnover some of its missiles for international disposal, or to close a gulag.

This is unfortunate, because despite all the great television, it is not clear at all how the meeting actually moved the peninsula forward. Hopefully it quickly catalyses a rolling series of negotiations at lower diplomatic levels. If not, it will join a long list of previous inter-Korean statements that did nothing to actually bring the Korean stalemate to a close.

Accelerating post-summit negotiation over the details of implementation is critical, because the US-North Korean summit is in just six weeks. US President Donald Trump has hinted that he will walk out of the talks if they do not progress well, and his administration has made extraordinary demands regarding denuclearisation.

Trump appears to anticipate a discussion of a complete rollback of the nuclear program and weapons, what the diplomats call CVID: ‘complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament.’ He has also said he would not be ‘played’ or duped by North Korea. This strongly suggests that his patience is limited, and he expects major Northern concessions.

Six week is almost certainly not enough time for the staff work for something this momentous. Previous rounds of negotiation with North Korea took years and still failed. It is highly unlikely North Korea will agree to CVID.

It is also very likely Pyongyang will demand huge concessions from the US (and South Korea) for movement on the nuclear program. So far Trump has not hinted what the US might give in return. The political and strategic divisions between the US and North Korea remain as wide as ever. The South Korean negotiators need to start working right now with the North to hammer out a deal. Trump’s threatened walk-out would almost certainly send US relations with North Korea into a deep freeze.

My own sense is that ultimately these issues cannot be overcome in time for the Trump summit to lead to a breakthrough. If the South-North summit was light on detail, that strongly suggests that the staff-work necessary for a final deal is not finished. This is not surprising, because the issues are so huge. But with the Trump-Kim bilateral coming soon, something more solid than the Panmunjom declaration is needed. If not, the summit will be bust.

In a normal diplomatic meeting among foreign policy officials, that happens all the time. But at the summit level, a failed meeting could have dire consequences. If Pyongyang will not negotiate away its nuclear program in a direct, one-on-one meeting with the American president, Trump may assume there is no more point to diplomacy. A meeting of the highest leaders failed, and now North Korea will be a de facto nuclear power. Trump has said he would prevent that, which raises the likelihood that the US would then attack North Korea, as Trump threatened to do last year.

All this is very high stakes, and it would be wise to slow down. The South Korean government has accelerated these summits, because it wants to lock Trump into a diplomatic track with North Korea. Trump’s war threats last year scared the South Koreans so much that the Southern president felt compelled to say publicly that the US may not attack North Korea without South Korea’s permission. By tying Trump to summit diplomacy, a US attack is forestalled.

But the risk is that if the summit fails - or worse, if Trump does actually walk out - then military action will be the only US recourse left. 2018’s Korean détente now hangs on the outcome of the next summit.