President Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to South Korea isn’t sure when in the process of North Korea negotiations the U.S. should ease economic pressure on the regime.
“I think that’s part of the negotiations, and that’s certainly part of the deliberations that will happen back here in Washington and in Seoul with South Korea,” retired Adm. Harry Harris, who led the U.S. military in the Pacific region before being tapped for a diplomatic post, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.
The question of when sanctions relief is provided to North Korea is of central importance to the campaign to pressure the regime into dismantling its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. North Korea always has preferred a process that allows them to receive economic rewards in exchange for actions that stop short of crippling their nuclear weapons program.
Trump’s team, including Harris, have emphasized the necessity of avoiding that scenario.
But Harris opened the door to a different process when he was asked if Trump would demand “the complete removal of all nuclear equipment before there is any relaxation of trade sanctions” during an exchange with Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass.
“Not necessarily to the extent that you just described,“ he replied. “I believe that ‘denuclearization’ means the complete denuclearization of equipment, research, existing stockpiles, ad all of that, including the means to deliver them. I think that’s what ‘denuclearization’ means. I don’t know, quite frankly, where along that timeline towards complete denuclearization that we should start to relax sanctions.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took a harder line while traveling in China. “[T]he sanctions and the economic relief that North Korea will receive will only happen after the full denuclearization, the complete denuclearization, of North Korea,” he said during a joint press availability with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Throughout his confirmation hearing, Harris put a greater emphasis on the idea of “maintain[ing] those sanctions until there is some concrete demonstrations of moving towards a denuclearization of North Korea.” Still, he agreed that the U.S. must continue to push China to implement the sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.
Senators in both parties see a potential trap in such a process. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., worried that China and North Korea will take advantage of South Korea’s eagerness for a successful deal to drive a wedge between the U.S. and South Korea.
“In particular, I’m concerned about a [North Korean] push that would say, ‘Well, we don’t have a deal, but in order for us to do some concessions short of denuclearization . . . we want you to have a significant reduction of troops and . . . we want you to remove the missile defense system from South Korea,’” Rubio said. “I think there is a real danger of a protracted process here, where they are able to gain very valuable concessions.”
Harris pledged to work, as ambassador, to make sure that neither the U.S. nor South Korea made unilateral decisions about the allied military posture on the peninsula. He agreed as well that the U.S. must continue to push China to implement the sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.
“I am concerned that China is starting to relax sanctions and they want further relaxation of sanctions by all the parties,” Harris said. “I think it’s important that we maintain those sanctions until we can come to the point that we believe that Kim Jong Un is serious about the negotiations and the ultimate aim of the talks which is to have that complete verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.”
