One More Time

The US unilaterally abandoned the nuclear negotiations at the Hanoi summit where the negotiating team officially adopted the "one bundle" approach to denuclearization in North Korea. This is also known as the all or nothing approach, and the "Libyan approach." North Korea didn't need any more examples of US unwillingness to negotiate. The national security sector of the US economy, and the associated think tanks, academic endowments, and their spokesmen in the media, know that any success or rapprochement with North Korea jeopardizes the US alliance with Japan, which contrary to their public statements is adamantly opposed to negotiations with North Korea that are anything short of a total surrender. Therefore, no intermediate "step by step" process that relies on reciprocity and trust building among the parties can be allowed. Russia, China, South Korea, and North Korea, all favored the step by step approach.

The US military complex in northeast Asia has no raison d'etre without the ongoing 70 year conflict with North Korea. Proposals for negotiations with North Korea are just not taken seriously in the US. Claims that the US is open to negotiations with no conditions are just posturing for public relations purposes. Efforts by South Korea's Unification Ministry were vilified in US media during the entire Moon Jae-in administration while they were threatened with sanctions and told to get in "lock step" with the US and Japan which have zero consideration for Korean national aspirations. Regardless of the improvidence of the recent North Korea ICBM launch, the recent US-Japanese carrier strike force operating in the East Sea/ Sea of Japan merely cements North Korean perception of the hostile intent of both nations toward them. It's the same old gunboat diplomacy from both countries during the imperialist era of the 19th Century that they know so well after it culminated in two million or more deaths in Korea during the Korean conflict, and a brutal and oppressive Japanese occupation long before that.

Koreans didn't need Ukraine to remind them of anything. Japan wants to erase its past history of crimes against humanity during the Pacific War. The US ignores any Korean history before June 25, 1950, and its saturation bombing campaigns thereafter that destroyed virtually everything in North Korea. US diplomats ask stupidly "why can't they get over it?" Koreans will never forget.