Coverage of negotiations with North Korea have almost always focused on the role of the president or the State Department. Trump met with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to Pyongyang for follow-up talks.
Who was left out? The legislative branch. Not only was Congress left out of these meetings and their planning, but they were also left mostly in the dark. Indeed, Pompeo’s remarks to Congress this week was the first time that Congress really had a chance to learn the details of Trump’s negotiations with North Korea.
During her remarks at an Arms Control Association panel on Friday, Kelsey Davenport, the Director for Nonproliferation Policy for the Arms Control Association, explained that Congress could, however, play a productive role in ensuring that denuclearization in North Korea is handled successfully with lasting results. She makes an important point that lawmakers should not overlook.
Although Congress may rightly be skeptical of the president’s ability to navigate volatile talks with North Korea, both sides of the aisle support mitigating the threat of North Korea and should work with Trump, rather than against him to give ongoing negotiations their best chance of success.
Lawmakers who are worried about the lack of specifics or mandated verification and monitoring in Trump’s agreement with Kim Jong Un could, instead of calling for unreasonable demands that would tie the president’s hands, work to outline what testing and verification might look like and push for the development of technology that would make it possible.
Another option for Congress would be to ensure that although the president’s words might signal new, friendlier relations, that the economic pressure of sanctions continues to be enforced to keep North Korea at the table. Currently, as Davenport highlighted, it seems that some of the still imposed sanctions likely are not being fully enforced or are not engaging North Korea in the most prudent ways. Congress can work to change that.
To be sure, a congressional role in the oversight of existing sanctions doesn’t imply that lawmakers should seek to impose more sanctions. The opposite is true. Right now, as Davenport emphasized, is not the time for new sanctions. North Korea is at the negotiating table, and Trump’s approach just might work; new sanctions would damage that process without pushing North Korea towards denuclearization.
Congress, however, likely lacks the political will to take these steps.
