After abruptly cancelling his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a day later Trump declared the talks are back on -- at least until Trump changes his mind again. But more important, none of the issues or risks, which are major, have been resolved.
The key issue is that the two sides have never agreed on what “denuclearize” means regarding North Korea. To Trump, it means North Korea giving up the nuclear weapons it has spent decades building. North Korea believes those weapons guarantee its survival. The only way it might possibly surrender those weapons is if the South Korea was also “denuclearized.” That would mean the United States, a nuclear power, agreeing to withdraw its troops from South Korea, which has no nuclear weapons. As Humpty Dumpty said in Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word…it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
North Korea has twice the number of troops and artillery pieces that South Korea does, although South Korea has far better equipment. While North Korea has huge numbers of artillery dug into tunnels within range of Seoul, South Korea’s capital, the U.S. has some 28,500 troops permanently based to protect South Korea. Defectors say that Kim Jong Un seeks the military conquest of South Korea and the North Korean constitution calls for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula under the Kim family.
Kim greatly wants a meeting with Trump; it is a goal in itself. No U.S. President has ever met with a North Korean leader. Kim seeks the prestige such a meeting would bring and the implicit recognition of North Korea as a nuclear power. Trump, who wrongly takes himself to be a superb negotiator, believes that he can persuade North Korea to surrender its nuclear arms. That would make him the first U.S. President to succeed in doing so – and he craves the Nobel Peace Prize he believes he would be awarded. Trump even had a commemorative coin commissioned to memorialize the meeting. Talks were set for June 12 in Singapore. That was not to last.
Trump’s National Security Advisor and über hawk John Bolton began the fracas by stating that the “Libya Model” was appropriate for North Korea. The problem is that the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, gave up nuclear weapons and then was overthrown in the Arab Spring when the U.S. and Europe supported rebels in Libya against him. Bolton would prefer U.S. military action against North Korea, so he may have deliberately mentioned Libya to stop the talks. Vice President Pence then supported Bolton by again referring to the Libya model.
North Korea reacted as one might expect, stating that North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons was not on the agenda. In addition, North Korea called Pence a “political dummy” and threatened a “nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.” That caused Trump to cancel the talks.
South Korea, which appropriately fears that war would mean millions of Korean dead, urged Trump and Kim to speak. For its part, North Korea sent a letter saying it was still willing to meet. That prompted Trump to say that the summit still might occur; after all, that supposed Nobel Peace Prize might still be within reach.
One danger is that Trump will be so eager to conclude a deal with North Korea that he will sacrifice the interests of U.S. allies South Korea and Japan (which is only 120 miles from South Korea). He might agree, for example, to withdraw U.S. troops if North Korea agrees to not develop ballistic missiles definitely able to carry nuclear warheads to the United States. That, one supposes, would be one form of denuclearization.
As for Humpty Dumpty, “’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’”