What is one to make of CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s secret Easter weekend trip to Pyongyang and his brief dalliance with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un?
I must confess that one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind had nothing at all to do with the historic nature of the visit. I jumped, perhaps on reflex, to the rough confirmation process Pompeo is going through. The former congressman from Kansas is facing a steep climb to become President Trump’s second secretary of state, so steep that he may be the first secretary of state nominee since the 1920s to be reported unfavorably by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Pompeo’s establishment of a direct channel to Kim Jong Un will make that trek slightly smoother, although the final vote on the Senate floor will be razor-thin either way.
But getting beyond the politics and into the substance, we should all applaud the Trump administration for dispatching Pompeo to Pyongyang. Even Trump’s loudest critics should be pleased that the White House is taking the time to go through the intense predatory work required to pull off a successful summit between Trump and Kim. For a long time, it appeared as if the administration was winging the whole thing, betting that the first ever meeting between American and North Korean heads of state could be pulled off by aligning the moon and the stars. Pompeo’s shuttle diplomacy, if anything, gives us all some relief that the White House does in fact have some sort of a plan and is taking the prospects of a diplomatic process seriously.
Some are complaining that secret talks with the North Koreans should be led by diplomats rather than spies and that Pompeo is not the right man to carry the president’s message. Those critiques, however, seem to be more about process and tradition rather than about what is wise and what is not. Tapping Pompeo is interesting because he’s hawkish than most of Washington’s hawks. If his confirmation hearing was any guide to his thinking, Pompeo is reluctant to provide the North Koreans with any concessions until after they begin dismantling their nuclear weapons program.
And yet, the choice of Pompeo also makes sense given his proximity to Trump and the warm rapport the two have. If one wanted to send Kim Jong Un a message that President Trump is not all hot-air and truly wants a negotiated resolution to this issue, sending the president’s trusted emissary to deliver it was common sense.
Ultimately, however, none of this outreach will matter if Pyongyang and Washington are unable to compromise on their bottom-line or get the synchronization right. If the North Koreans insist on a full U.S. military pullout from South Korea, a lifting of America’s nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan, and the termination of America’s alliances with Seoul and Tokyo in exchange for full, complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization, the talks will fail as they have over the previous quarter century. At the same time, if the Trump administration is delusional enough to believe it can persuade the Kim regime into getting rid of its life insurance policy without offering some economic, security, and political rewards on the front-end, the White House might as well stay home. Any nuclear negotiation will be rough and turbulent — and the chance of the talks failing early is far greater than the chance of Trump and Kim signing a groundbreaking agreement.
But Mike Pompeo’s communication with Kim Jong Un is nevertheless a promising step in what will be a rocky, uphill journey. The White House should press on, even as it keeps its eyes are wide open for any tricks Pyongyang might pull before and during the course of the talks.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities. His opinions are his own.
