When Kim Yong Chol was at the White House in early June, Trump told him that the US would consider an announcement to end the Korean conflict. This falls in the category of CVIG which is the term Pompeo came up with, complete verifiable irreversible guarantee (of North Korean security). This negotiating concept represented an acceptance of a reciprocity principle. Reciprocity was demonstrated, at least on a temporary basis, when the joint military exercises were suspended. When Pompeo was meeting with Chol in Pyongyang, in reaction to the tsunami of criticism of the summit in the US, about the summit and the exercise suspension, he blew off the proposal of an announcement to end the state of war and went strictly with his allegedly new formula FFVD. The latter is a superficial name change that failed to disguise the return to a unilateral ultimatum to denuclearize. This is the same hardline approach that almost derailed the summit before it happened. There won't be any denuclearization without dealing with the security guarantee issues for North Korea. Currently, the press and all other interested parties are to the right of Pompeo and Trump on this, so Pompeo retreated to the hardliner position which predictably failed.
The game being "played" in the current vernacular is not over. The sanctions are still in effect, and are having a crushing effect on the North's despotic government. The patronage system of the dictatorship has been impaired for some time now by the economic impact of the UN sanctions and the poor harvest last year, expected again this year. Soldiers in North Korea are literally starving. The propaganda and diplomacy of North Korea has been geared toward promises of economic improvement that need to be delivered, soon. Recent changes in North Korean military and civil leadership also suggest the need to consolidate control of the armed forces and the need to shift from the military leg to the economic leg of the "byung jin" policy.
The US can deal with Kim and continue on with this process or deal with some unknown generals in bunkers. Kim desperately needs the economic advances possible with denuclearization to achieve the economic improvements needed to bolster his current rule. It isn't like the military pressure is off North Korea either. The decapitation teams and the targeting and command and control resources necessary for a theater nuclear war are standing by in South Korea and Japan and ready to go on an order from Washington.
It's still the same dispute about how the negotiations will go forward. It's too early to call these negotiations a failure, but if they do fail, what's the alternative to negotiations?
No comments:
Post a Comment