[If the ultimate goal of North Korean denuclearization seems like a long shot, his proximate goal, according to one senior administration official, is at least to get North Korean officials to reveal their true intentions fairly quickly. Previous American administrations spent years in detailed and ultimately fruitless negotiations, giving the North breathing space to develop its lethal arsenal further.]
By Gardiner Harris
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Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, second from right, being greeted by Kim Yong-chol,
a
senior aide to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Pyongyang on Friday.
Credit
Pool photo by Andrew Harnik
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PYONGYANG,
North Korea — Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo landed in North Korea on Friday for a series of talks aimed
at persuading the country to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs
— a mission that in his conversations with at least two outside experts he has
said was doomed from the outset.
The dire assessment from Mr. Pompeo comes
despite that fact that he is one of the most visible proponents of North Korea
talks in the Trump administration.
Mr. Pompeo has repeatedly said he believes
that the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, is serious about negotiations.
Mr. Pompeo is making his third trip to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, even
as others — including his rivals in the administration — have been more
skeptical of the diplomatic efforts.
And he has tried to plan for success. He is
traveling with North Asia experts from the State Department, C.I.A. and
National Security Council, and is scheduled to spend many hours in meetings
here, including all afternoon on Friday and much of the day Saturday.
If the ultimate goal of North Korean
denuclearization seems like a long shot, his proximate goal, according to one
senior administration official, is at least to get North Korean officials to
reveal their true intentions fairly quickly. Previous American administrations
spent years in detailed and ultimately fruitless negotiations, giving the North
breathing space to develop its lethal arsenal further.
John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security
adviser, does not believe that North Korea intends to surrender its nuclear or
ballistic missile weapons programs, he has told others.
If failure is inevitable, Mr. Pompeo wants it
to come more quickly this time, so the administration can return to its maximum
pressure campaign of sanctions and diplomatic isolation of North Korea, he has
told advisers.
If the administration decides to return to a
campaign of maximum pressure, officials have privately acknowledged, the
administration may not again be able to persuade the world that Mr. Kim is out
of control and cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
That was last year’s tactic, when President
Trump branded Mr. Kim a “madman” and a murderer of his own people. Mr. Pompeo
also then questioned whether Mr. Kim was rational and said, “I am hopeful we
will find a way to separate that regime from” its nuclear arsenal.
In recent months, however, Mr. Trump has
redeemed Mr. Kim, calling him “very honorable” and “nice” while insisting that
the North is “no longer a nuclear threat.” And Mr. Pompeo has repeatedly said
in recent months that Mr. Kim is rational.
“After this meeting, Pompeo will probably
again say that Kim Jong-un is intelligent and trustworthy, which is truly
unfortunate,” said Sung-Yoon Lee of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at
Tufts University. “I think we’re headed in the direction of giving up and
accepting North Korea as a de facto nuclear state.”
Heather Nauert, the State Department’s
spokeswoman, denied that Mr. Pompeo saw negotiations with the North as bound to
fail.
”Will this be tough? Yes,” she said of the
expected many rounds of talks. “Will negotiations involve a lot of hard work?
Of course. But the secretary is committed to implementing the plan agreed to by
both leaders in Singapore.”
Defenders of the Trump administration’s
strategy note that at least the North has ended its provocative missile and
nuclear tests.
But in the meantime, North Korea could continue
perfecting its weapons systems. And countries that have perfected their weapons
technology, as Mr. Kim has said the North has done, rarely need such tests.
Pakistan, for instance, has not carried out a
nuclear weapons test for 20 years but is widely acknowledged to be a major
nuclear power.
Michael Green, who negotiated with North
Korea during the administration of President George W. Bush, agreed that the
Trump administration would soon be forced to accept North Korea as a nuclear
state.
“If the North Koreans don’t fire off missiles
or nuclear weapons but instead just don’t comply with denuclearization, the
administration is going to have a very hard time, having sold the Trump-Kim
relationship the way they did, going back to China and the allies and saying in
effect, ‘We were duped,’” Mr. Green said.
As they did the last time Mr. Pompeo came to
Pyongyang, the North Koreans will most likely offer a parting gift. In May,
they handed over three American detainees whom Mr. Trump greeted in a
triumphant ceremony at an air base outside of Washington.
This time, the North is considered likely to
approve the transfer of what officials here will attest are the remains of
American service members missing since the Korean War.
Whether any American bones are actually in
the boxes will be determined only by later scientific tests. The last time such
transfers were made, some of the remains were found to have come from animals
and the kind of random human bones easily gathered from the country’s many
gulags — a main reason Mr. Bush ended the transfers.
During his visit, Mr. Pompeo will be pushing
the North Koreans for “real action, real change” toward what he has said is Mr.
Kim’s stated commitment for complete, verifiable, irreversible
denuclearization.
So far, however, the only actions American
intelligence agencies have detected have been efforts to expand weapons
facilities and conceal the number of weapons it has as well as the facilities
used to make them, according to reports.
Still, Mr. Pompeo must keep trying to
persuade Mr. Kim to reverse course for at least another few months, and
probably until after November’s midterm elections, largely because Mr. Trump
will not stand for an earlier declaration of failure, according to those who
have spoken with him about North Korea. Mr. Trump replaced Rex W. Tillerson as
secretary of state with Mr. Pompeo largely because of Mr. Pompeo’s contacts
with North Korea as the director of the C.I.A.
“Many good conversations with North Korea —
it is going well!” Mr. Trump tweeted this week after reports of North Korea’s
continued weapons development surfaced, adding, “If not for me, we would now be
at War with North Korea!”
Such declarations have made Mr. Pompeo’s task
here harder, analysts say, because they have let the North Koreans know that
Mr. Trump is so deeply invested in dialogue that he will not declare the
endeavor a failure anytime soon.
But corralling the president’s rhetoric on
North Korea is only a part of Mr. Pompeo’s challenge on this trip, which
includes later stops in Tokyo, Hanoi, Abu Dhabi and Brussels.
The trip to Brussels for the annual NATO
summit meeting could be particularly fraught, with Mr. Trump planning to t meet
with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia days later in Helsinki.
Mr. Trump recently sent sharply worded
letters to at least four NATO allies, saying that the United States was losing
patience with what he said was their failure to meet security obligations
shared by the alliance. Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that countries such as
Germany owe NATO money.
Last month, Mr. Trump attended a disastrous
Group of 7 meeting in Quebec during which he reportedly told allies that “NATO
is as bad as Nafta.” Mr. Trump later insulted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of
Canada in a Twitter post as “very dishonest & weak.” European diplomats
have said they are deeply anxious about the coming NATO summit meeting because
of Mr. Trump’s unpredictability.
State Department officials have played down
the possibility of a contentious meeting in Brussels, saying that White House
economic officials mishandled the Group of 7 gathering, while they will be in
charge of the NATO one.
But if Mr. Trump tells off NATO allies and
soon after embraces Mr. Putin just as a trade war with Europe, Japan and Canada
heats up, the foundations of the postwar order could shake.
In a recent interview, Mr. Pompeo tried to
allay concern about the growing number of trade and strategic disputes with
allies.
“The rift between the United States and
Europe is much overstated,” he said, adding that “in the end the traditional
values-driven alliance between Europe and the United States, that
trans-Atlantic alliance, will remain strong as it has for coming on 70-plus
years now.”
These next few days could prove whether he is
right.