Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Beijing for three days of talks on trade, investment, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons, hinted Saturday at the possibilities of a retreat from the overheated, bellicose threats that have recently characterized interactions between North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and Pr*sident Donald Trump. Tillerson acknowledged at a press conference that the United States is in direct communication with North Korea’s leaders, noting that it has a ”couple, three channels open to Pyongyang,” and seeks a dialogue with the latest addition to the world’s nuclear weapons nations.
David E. Sanger at The New York Times reports:
“We are probing, so stay tuned,” Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said, when pressed about how he might begin a conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, that could avert what many government officials fear is a significant chance of open conflict between the two countries.
“We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang — we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout,” he added. “We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang,” a reference to North Korea’s capital.
Given the tensions and trepidation caused by what one highly respected retired U.S. admiral recently said is the closest the world has come to a possible nuclear exchange since the Cuban missile crisis 55 years ago, it might be tempting to make too much of Tillerson’s remarks. But they do at least offer hope there will be no need to spruce up the abandoned backyard bomb shelters some Americans built in the 1950s and ‘60s as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union ratcheted up and thousands of nuclear warheads were manufactured and put on hair-trigger alert by both sides.
But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.
At this stage there’s no reason to believe that Trump will back off from calling Kim a “madman” or that Kim will stop labeling Trump a “dotard” and “deranged,” with both men spouting off about blasting the other with the first nuclear weapons delivered in anger since the United States flattened half of Nagasaki, Japan, 72 years ago. On Saturday, for instance, North Korean state media issued a statement that said Trump was heading for a "suicidal act of inviting a nuclear disaster that will reduce America to a sea of flames."
Jonathan Kaiman and Jessica Meyers at the Los Angeles Times report:
Tillerson also said it was essential “to calm things down” between North Korea and the United States and its allies. Asked if that pertained to Trump as well, Tillerson told reporters, “I think the whole situation is a bit overheated right now. I think everyone would like for it to calm down.”
In addition to nuclear weapons that Pyongyang says now includes hydrogen bombs—a claim about which some U.S. and other scientists are skeptical—the North has been testing ICBMs with a much longer range than its previously tested missiles. Whether these can reach the continental United States remains questionable. But there is nonetheless widespread belief among nuclear weapons experts that even if North Korea doesn’t yet have a missile that can currently strike any of the 48 contiguous states or a miniaturized warhead to install on its tip, some time in the near future it will have.
Thus, even though the rhetoric coming from Trump and Kim may be no more than bluster, the chance that a miscalculation or misunderstanding could ignite a war is unnerving to many long-time observers of nuclear politics.
Because of the close ties between China and North Korea, the United States has sought to get Beijing to put the economic screws to the Hermit Kingdom to force it to back off its pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles. China has joined in voting for U.N. sanctions against North Korea and has vowed to strictly enforce them. For instance, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said Thursday that joint ventures between Beijing and Pyongyang will be shut down come January. However, al Jazeera reported:
Einar Tangen, a political analyst and adviser to China's government, said there's not much more Beijing can do to curtail Pyongyang's nuclear programme.
"From the Chinese perspective, they see two speeding trains on the same track going full tilt at one another. North Korea has enshrined its nuclear programme in its constitution, there's no way they are going to give up what they see as the only point of leverage," Tangen told Al Jazeera.
"From the US side, a nuclear-armed North Korea capable of delivering an attack against US territory is unacceptable. So you have two groups who are not willing to budge an inch. What we need here is diplomacy, not deal-makers. It will require outside-the-box thinking by China and Russia if they want to resolve this."
Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and a member of the Russian International Affairs Council, wrote in a Sept. 18 op-ed that Russia is “in a unique position to help de-escalate” the situation:
North Korea will not denuclearize; it’s too late for that. Neither will it ever formally be recognized as a nuclear power. But it will eventually have crude nuclear weapons with which to strike United States territory.
Sanctions, no matter how strict, will not stop Pyongyang from pursuing its program, which it sees as the key to its very survival; as Mr. Putin said recently, North Koreans will “eat grass” before they give up nuclear weapons. [...]
And so the only viable strategy left is to convince the North Korean leadership that it already has the deterrent it needs, and that going beyond that — by developing more nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles — would only be counterproductive.
This is where Russia comes in: It can help nudge Pyongyang toward strategic restraint, and help defuse tensions in the meantime, by offering it new economic prospects.
But many U.S. experts are skeptical. And Tillerson himself expressed skepticism in his speech to the United Nations on Sept. 21, in which he said:
We especially urge Russia to examine how it can better support global nonproliferation efforts. As the world’s two most powerful nuclear states, Russia and the United States share the greatest responsibility for upholding nonproliferation norms and stopping the further spread of nuclear weapons. We have cooperated well before: the United States and the Soviet Union worked together closely in drafting most of the text that became the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which helped keep proliferation under control through the Cold War. Washington and Moscow did this, moreover, notwithstanding their own Cold War rivalry and the many problems in their bilateral relationship. In the post-Cold War era, Russia worked hard to improve accountability for its nuclear stockpile dispersed across the former Soviet Union, and we engaged closely in cooperative efforts – through the Nunn-Lugar program – to reduce the risk of weapons or material falling into the hands of proliferators or terrorists.
Unfortunately, in recent years, Russia has often acted in ways that weaken global norms and undercut efforts to hold nations accountable. Examples include violating its own obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, flouting the security assurances it made at the end of the Cold War, impeding efforts to build on the legacy of past international efforts on nuclear security, and seeking to weaken the International Atomic Energy Agency’s independence in investigating clandestine nuclear programs. If Russia wants to restore its role as a credible actor in resolving the situation with North Korea, it can prove its good intentions by upholding its commitments to established international efforts on nuclear security and arms control.
Trenin is certainly right on one score—now that it has them, North Korea will not surrender its nukes. Whether one believes that the North only pursued obtaining nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. attack or so that it can intimidate Japan and South Korea, those weapons are now a matter of pride and power in a nation that cannot adequately feed its own populace. Diplomacy—from the U.S., China, Russia, and whomever else wants to be involved—has to be directed toward getting Kim to keep those weapons locked up and cease flying ever-more capable test-missiles over the heads of the Japanese.
The best way to accomplish this might be to persuade the United States, the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and Germany to hammer out an agreement the way they did with Iran over its nuclear development program. This would be quite different, of course, since North Korea already has nukes, but the right kind of arrangement might let us all breathe a bit easier. Of course, this approach will go exactly nowhere as long as Donald Trump keeps trashing the Iran agreement.