Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly asked North Korea to give up 60 to 70 percent of its nuclear warheads within six to eight months. In no surprise to anyone familiar with Pyongyang’s approach to negotiation, North Korea refused. Here a few reasons why, based on research from the nonpartisan, nonprofit Arms Control Association, that U.S. negotiations aren’t working quite as well as Trump had hoped:
To start with, the U.S. negotiating strategy needs work. Sending the secretary of state to head up negotiating efforts isn’t exactly ideal. Every time a big-name U.S. official jets off to Pyongyang, American news media will write about it, and Americans expect to see results. This isn’t how negotiations work. They take time and dedication and lots and lots of meetings to work out the details. The Trump administration would be better served by having another official — high level enough to show North Korea we are taking them seriously but not someone who will constantly be expected to produce results at every meeting — take the lead. Despite Trump’s dislike of the Iran agreement, this was the strategy employed by the Obama administration with Tehran which by all accounts, except Trump’s, were successful.
[More: John Bolton: North Korea failing to live up to commitment to denuclearize]
Secondly, the U.S. needs to recognize that North Korea is unlikely to immediately hand over a full account of nuclear weapons to facilitate Pompeo’s demand of a 60 to 70 percent reduction. Indeed, obtaining a number and a verification method in talks with the Soviet Union, for example, came at the end of negotiations, not at the beginning. Moreover, even if North Korea handed over what it claimed to be a full accounting of their capabilities that number would be meaningless without an established verification method.
Perhaps most obviously, if the only thing that the U.S. offered in return for North Korea giving up the majority of its nuclear stockpile is a reduction of sanctions and removal from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, that probably isn’t going to cut it for the North Koreans. If the U.S. is serious about negotiating with Kim Jong Un, they will need a better offer than that. As previous negotiations have demonstrated, North Korea is unlikely to make the first move and surely won’t do so unless they feel secure.
Finally, the U.S. needs to be realistic. A six to eight-month timeline with definite results is ambitious. Negotiations require patience and are an ongoing process. Right now, the U.S. seems to think it can just say the right thing and coax Kim to give up his weapons. It won’t work like that.
Instead, the U.S. needs to establish the mechanisms to move talks along, like setting up negotiating channels, agreeing on a concrete definition in writing of what denuclearization means, and ensuring that current sanctions are enforced to continue putting pressure on the Kim regime to come to the negotiating table.
As satellite images that show ongoing work on nuclear sites, it is clear that North Korea remains a true threat. Ill-conceived negotiations and unilateral demands won’t make that threat go away, regardless of Trump’s tweets or the vague agreement signed in Singapore. If the administration is serious about addressing North Korea, that is an admirable goal, but they need to think through their negotiating strategy.
