Trump-Kim Summit

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CWA # 94, 12 March 2019
Trump-Kim Summit
No deal is better, but isn't it bad?

  Harini Madhusudan

The Hanoi summit is not a failure but was simply premature.

Research Associate, ISSSP, NIAS

 

The dramatic end to the highly anticipated Hanoi summit, speaks volumes about the ‘romanticized’ relations between President Donald Trump and Supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. The summit has been revelatory in many ways but the question remains,  is the lapse of the summit an end to the diplomatic efforts between the United States and North Korea, or just an end to the portrayed “positive” relations between the two leaders? What are the lessons learnt from the mutual misjudgement of interests from both the parties? What are the gains and losses?

The doors for further diplomatic efforts have not been completely closed. After a conscious decision by the US, along with South Korea, they suspended the scheduled springtime military drills and announced that it would be replaced by smaller exercises in an effort to support the talks. There is an allegation that the North Korean hackers attacked ‘critical infrastructure’ in the US during the summit. Alongside this, was the court hearing of Michael Cohen. Certainly, all these factors have had a particular impact on the lapse of the summit.

 

Lessons Learnt

 

First, it was a stretch to expect a join statement from this summit. Though the Singapore summit set the bar high with the signing of the joint communique.   Both the parties signed an agreement with 4 guarantees; creating a new relationship by establishing liaison offices, building a peace regime starting with a peace declaration, working toward denuclearization essentially by reducing fissile material production and returning more soldiers’ remains from the Korean War. However, none of these materialised and there were no details on how the goals were to be achieved.

 

Second, it does not mean that Trump is unaware of what he has done, he is a businessman and he certainly understands how beneficial deals are made. Trump exit the summit saying, ‘sometimes we have to walk away.’ Both Kim and Trump, by taking the negotiations to the highest level tried to make it a historic achievement of their own personalities, evidently underscoring the dangers of over personalising negotiations. To the end, the leaders remained glued to their maximalist nation-centric interests.

 

What is interesting to note is that, Trump stuck to his original plan of a commitment to complete denuclearisation while Kim tried to offer the closing of the Yongbyun nuclear facility in exchange for ‘partial’ removal of sanctions. Maybe both the sides should have waited for a minimally accepted deal in the negotiations at the lower levels of diplomacy before Hanoi. The advisors of Trump did request for the summit to be postponed because they felt it was too early.

 

Third, both the sides clearly misjudged the other, Trump more. The attitude of the US towards the DPRK nuclear programme can be associated to what is called the, ‘hegemonic alliance ideology of nuclear deterrence.’ This is seen as coercive.  The strategic interests of the American presence in the region, is strongly based on the threat from DPRK. If a deal were to be made, then there would be no relevance to the US presence in South Korea. Kim, on the other hand, has the challenge of dual survival. Survival of his regime and survival of himself. Kim has seen what the US has done in the case of Saddam Hussein, and Muammar al-Gaddafi. The Hanoi summit was indeed very early for both the sides to reach consensus on critical interests. Any joint agreement that would have come from this summit would be extremely challenging to implement.

 

Who loses the most?

 

Hanoi Summit would go down as an attempt in furthering ‘confidence building’ between the nations. “No Deal” is seen as a relief among many in security circles. Many US senators from both the parties said that they back the tough negotiating stance of Trump toward Pyongyang. It showed that the Trump administration has a clear strategy on their mind. There was strong public opinion that Trump wasted time and resources trying to make a deal with someone who never intended to. Nonetheless, The United States failed to get DPRK to open their markets to American companies. This is not the first time that the US and DPRK have disagreed to work together and certainly it will not be the last.

 

Only an unbalanced deal will come from the negotiations between the two countries. As a negotiator, Trump did not rush into a deal this time and it showed a sign of maturity in his approach. Did Trump lose face to Kim’s tactics? No. But getting Kim to the negotiating table, two times in two years itself is a huge gain for Trump. By walking away from the summit, Trump has ensured that his approach to DPRK remains one of his international successes as the President. This failure of US and success of Trump should both be noted.

 

South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in is one of the losers of the Hanoi summit because he cannot move forward with peace-building without meaningful progress toward denuclearization. The conflict on the Korean Peninsula would not have endured for 70 years if its solution was obvious. This was going to be the crowning moment for Moon Jae-in to show the success of his engagement strategy.

 

China continues to show optimism in the negotiation efforts between the US and DPRK. Kim rode a 60-hour China train to Hanoi. This was more than just a journey. It symbolised that Kim is supported and been provided security by China. Despite playing a dormant role in the two summits, China has re-emphasised that the hermit kingdom can not be dealt with, without China. It is interesting to note that, Kim Jong-un’s father Kim Jong-il’s also prefered trains. Kim Jong-il had a fear of flying, so he went almost everywhere by rail. When he died in 2011, he is said to have died on one of these special trains. Consider the extraordinary measures it took to foster Mr. Kim’s train journey to Vietnam.

 

China, North Korea and South Korea all have a common interest and that is the removal of US troops from South Korea. Vietnam managed to gain the attention of the US but failed to get its glorious moment of solving the dispute. Moscow is disappointed because it is keen to retract the sanctions that they have imposed on DPRK.

 

“No deal is better than a bad deal,” and this is true in the case of the dynamics in the relations between the two countries and the leaders. Both Trump and Kim have very strong personalities. The two summits have been successful in bringing them together and encouraging interactions. This means that the two of them understand each other better than they did when they called each other ‘madman,’ but still not enough to promise complete rollback on nuclear programme in exchange for complete removal of sanctions. However, the Hanoi summit is not a failure but was simply premature.

 

Since there is not much change in the dynamics, the sanctions will remain the factor that will drive the actions of Kim’s regime and the 2020 election- Trump’s policies. The decision to go slow on the military exercise and the allegation that DPRK has begun work on its ‘Sohae’ long range rocket launch site, makes the situation unpredictable at this point because Sohae launch site which is located at Tongchang-ri is the location that was promised to be shut down in the Singapore summit.  This site has been used in the past for satellite launches, which use ICBM technology that is banned under UN Security Council resolutions. This can be seen as a provocation attempt of DPRK by the United States.

A version of the above commentary was first published in the Rising Kashmir

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