There are two very different narratives of what is happening in the negotiations with North Korea.
- As Kim Jong Un promised in his New Year’s Day address, North Korea is building up its capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons and the missiles they might ride on. In the past week, we have seen evidence from the national intelligence agencies and independent analysts that there are at least two clandestine uranium enrichment plants, a missile manufacturing plant is being expanded, and related production is being expanded. This narrative is held by all the US intelligence agencies and most independent experts on North Korea and nuclear weapons.
- North Korea has agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program. Full denuclearization can be completed in a year or less. Kim and Donald Trump saw eye to eye at the Singapore summit. Kim wants to improve the North Korean economy, and he understands that only by giving up his nuclear program can he expect sanctions to be lifted. This is a victory for Trump’s policiy of “maximum pressure.” This narrative is held in public by Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton.
The revelations kept coming last week – The Korea-watchers at 38 North found evidence in satellite photos that existing buildings are being improved and new buildings added at the Yongbyon nuclear research site.
NBC cited “more than a dozen American officials who are familiar with [intelligence] assessments,” in reporting that North Korea is planning to deceive the American negotiators as to its nuclear capabilities and has at least two uranium enrichment sites besides the known facility at Yongbyon.
The Diplomat reported that US intelligence assesses that North Korea continued to produce support equipment and launchers for one of its newer ballistic missiles through the first half of 2018.
The Washington Post was told by “four officials who have seen it or received briefings” that the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon. Further, one of the uranium enrichment facilities is known as Kangson and is believed to have twice the capacity of Yongbyon.
The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California analyzed satellite images to show North Korea was finishing construction on the Chemical Material Institute in Hamhung. That institute makes solid-fuel ballistic missiles, more efficient and easier to use than the liquid-fueled missiles that have been their mainstay.
The disjunction in the two narratives is related to different interpretations of the word “denuclearization.” North Korea has used the word many times in the past. As President Barak Obama looked toward a future without nuclear weapons in his Prague speech, so North Korea looks forward to the day when nuclear weapons are no longer needed and the Korean peninsula can be denuclearized. To North Korea, that means removal of American troops and weapons from South Korea, along with other nuclear powers giving up their nukes.
When Trump and Pompeo use the word, they mean unilateral removal of North Korea’s nuclear program. They have not publicly indicated that they understand that North Korea means the word differently. Usually the first topic on the agenda for negotiations like this is to agree on definitions. It’s okay to differ on definitions during a negotiation, but that should be explicit, and the words that have no agreement should be used very carefully. In the last day or so, the US approach is described as “softening”, as Pompeo seems to have dropped the words “complete and verifiable denuclearization” (CVID). But nonuse of a phrase is a slim indicator, with no other evidence of a changed approach. A State Department spokesperson denies that there is a change.
The agreement that Trump and Kim signed in Singapore contains no detail. Four points make up the central part of the declaration.
- The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
- The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
- Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
- The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
Notice the vagueness: “commit to establish”, “join their efforts to build”, “commits to work toward”, “commit to recovering.” Point number 4 is the only one that comes close to describing action. Kim’s ramping up work on nuclear weapons violates nothing in the declaration.
Pompeo is preparing for his third trip to North Korea to discuss a timeline for denuclearization. Bolton said on the Sunday talk shows that eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program could take less than a year. The discussions with the North Koreans must be bizarre if this is what Pompeo is bringing to them.
We have to ask whether Trump and his people actually believe that North Korea is about to give up its nuclear weapons or they are trying to cover for a credulous President who has no idea how to negotiate international agreements. It could be a bit of both, too.
Trump has direct access to the information that has been leaked from the intelligence community and a lot more. But narrative #1 does not comport with what he has tweeted, which includes that all North Korean nuclear research had ended (11 June, 12 June), that the remains of American soldiers from the Korean War were on their way back or already here (11 June, 17 June), that “great progress” is being made on “the denuclearization of North Korea” (12 June), sites were closing (12 June), that we all can feel safer because there is no longer a “Nuclear Threat from North Korea” (13 June) and that we could “sleep well tonight!” (13 June), and that both sides were negotiating in good faith (13 June).
On Tuesday, he took note of the current news in a tweet. All of Asia is thrilled, and talks with North Korea are going well. He was correct that North Korea has not tested missiles or nuclear devices for the past several months, which may be a good will gesture or because they are happy with their designs and are moving toward production.
Arms control experts have been concerned that Trump would believe that North Korea planned to eliminate its nuclear weapons program, North Korea would do something to upend that belief, and Trump would respond angrily, egged on by Bolton. It appears, from today’s tweet, that Trump prefers to believe that the news of North Korea’s continuing nuclear weapons program is “Fake News.” This is a better outcome in that it doesn’t lead to war, but it’s not clear how long Trump and his administration can deny reality.
Update: Pompeo is still saying it.
RT @SecPompeo: Looking forward to continuing our work toward the final, fully verified denuclearization of #DPRK, as agreed to by Chairman Kim. Good to have the press along for the trip. pic.twitter.com/oaqIjQnQO0
— US Asia Pacific Media Hub (@eAsiaMediaHub) July 5, 2018
Photo: Slate
Cermet
Facts and reality matter nothing to the right-wing noise machine. Look who they voted for – a person that, except for racist statements is the exact opposite of all they claim to hold dear. The so-called family values zealot’s are even worse. The rump is trying to out do even bush-wack the sock puppet of cheney; apparently, the rump is putin’s sock puppet.
Villago Delenda Est
Donald and Pompeo are totally out of their league when dealing with North Korea. Utter amateurs, utterly fucking up.
CliosFanBoy
there’s a flag store on Rt 29 in northern Virginia* that is locally famous for being run by a total RW nutcase. For the past several weeks he’s been flying North Korean flags along with the US flag. Oye.
* for the locals, it’s just outside Merrifield on the Vienna side…
Tom Levenson
When the hope of peace rests on Trump and those around him refusing to acknowledge reality, a) we may have some breathing room. b) WASF.
Ruckus
DT has been making up his own reality his entire life. He isn’t going to stop now. What he gets pissed about is that everyone else can’t see how perfect his reality is, even when he changes his reality every other minute.
TenguPhule
Never bet on the most optimistic option when Trump and company are running shit.
More likely that North Korea is going to get overconfident in the gaslighting and someone on the front lines is not going to be as dumb as Trump.
Platonailedit
Look at the ready to kiss your ass posture of pompeo. What a cowardly punk.
p.a.
… and a pony
TenguPhule
Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, U.S. official says
Chickenballs is awfully eager to have other people fight in his name.
NotMax
Access has no connection to understanding. Plus in Dolt 45’s case, no connection to caring about what the information discloses; if it conflicts with the Potemkin village policy, it must be discarded, ignored or declared faulty (or a venal, personal affront).
jonas
John Bolton has spent his entire career saying that doing what Trump is doing is the height of folly and only repeatedly body slamming totalitarian dictators like Kim economically, militarily, and diplomatically can bring peace. WTF is he thinking now? That’s not even becoming Trump’s Dignity Wraith. I don’t even know what it is.
Also, Pompeo’s going to go to DPRK and come back and say that they had “constructive” talks but that there “still a long way to go” before the US and Kim see eye-to-eye on what “denuclearization” means. (Because for Kim, it means “we keep the nukes we have, and you and the South Koreans back off your war footing, withdraw US forces, sign a peace treaty and give us security guarantees”)
Cheryl Rofer
@jonas: Bolton’s apparent change of position is striking. The most prevalent explanation is that he’s fine with the disjunction I described because he feels it will lead to a breakdown in talks, at which time he can push his preferred war with North Korea. Another explanation is that Bolton would prefer war with Iran and sees North Korea as a distraction.
rikyrah
Remember all those Democrats turned. Dolt45 supporters online????
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1014843487802609664
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: Bolton is for sale like all Rs, wonder what his price was?
Brachiator
I guess I understand that the agreement would list items that are important to the US, but I find it sad that there seems to be no mention at all of North Korea returning South Koreans and Japanese nationals that they have kidnapped over the years. The living should matter as much as the remains of the dead.
I give Trump credit for showmanship. Between Boltonic bullshit and Pompeo’s North Korea trips, Trump can point to a flurry of activity even if there is no tangible result. And Trump has mastered the nothing response of “cancelling everything” if he does not like what he is hearing. This always keeps the rubes happy and convinced that Dear Leader Trump is always in command.
Democrats may have boxed themselves into a corner. Since we are supposed to be peaceful, we don’t have a John McCain to stalk the pundit shows demanding a tougher deal. And I notice that even the idiot-progressive wing and Bernie bros are largely silent, perhaps preferring Trumpian incompetence over a supposed War Hawk like Hillary was supposed to be, as long as there is the possibility of peace, no matter how empty that promise might be.
That the Republicans are more or less united behind the Unbearable Lightness of Being Trump is the most amazing about face since Nixon went to China.
And where will this all end? A local talk radio host who pretends to have some foreign policy knowledge claims that in the end, the US will accept that North Korea has some specified number of nukes and that North Korea will permit some inspections. So they will be fully paid up members of the Nuclear Club, but will promise not to try to wipe us out. Trump will accept this and ask where his Nobel Peace Prize is.
ETA: It is just fucking crazy that what Hillary Clinton really had to offer, competency, is not even a topic for “civil” conversation.
SFAW
Oh, who the fuck cares, really? I mean, it’s not as if NK is an actual threat to the US or to South Korea.
Next you’ll be telling us that Shitgibbon is giving Putin everything Vladi wants, without putting up a fight. No patriotic American would give away American democracy, nor try to fuck over our NATO partners, so easily.
I swear, the Shitgibbon Derangement Syndrome here is enough to drive me to drink. Or drugs. Or both. Or cyanide. Not necessarily in that order.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
I said before: As long as Weasel Face, personally, leads the charge up the beach.
There aren’t enough Depends in the world.
sukabi
Cheryl, do you have any insight on this? Seems like it would be a BFD if true.
Cheryl Rofer
@Brachiator:
We’re long past that point. I try, mostly in real life conversations, to think about the kind of world we might have had and what I might be doing in it to stay on some sort of track.
As to returning kidnapped South Korean and Japanese nationals, Trump consulted those two countries very little if at all before the summit. He doesn’t care about those folks.
patrick II
@NotMax:
Access is potential, actually reading security reports and trying to understand them is not what he is doing. I have access to a hundred thousand books at the library down the street, most of them have remained as unread by me as the security reports have been by Trump. The most efficient form of denial is to not let contrary facts into your mind in the first place, trying to understand them makes rationalizing your world view more difficult.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
“Lip service,” to put it very euphemistically. Of course, Bolton was probably the head giver, not the receiver. Fucking traitor, just like the rest.
Manyakitty
@CliosFanBoy: Does he have one for Russia, too? Yeesh, what a sucker.
nonynony
@Cheryl Rofer:
Here’s a question (and OMG even 2 years ago I would have thought this was the height of conspiracy theory to think this) – what would be the best thing for the US to do from Putin’s perspective?
Bolton seems to have gotten a bit cozy with certain Russian interests since his days in the GWB administration. Could there be a connection there?
Platonailedit
@Brachiator:
Really? It was a dud politically for him and the rethugs. Any ‘uptick’ in his approval rating as reported by 3rd rate em mess em polls is mostly due to his locking up immigrants and their children.
sdhays
@Cheryl Rofer: Or Bolton is simply just as corrupt and strategically rudderless as the rest of the Republican Party.
Cheryl Rofer
@sukabi: I don’t know about that report in particular, but the war goes on in eastern Ukraine. The presence of a Republican congressional delegation in Moscow over Fourth of July is appalling, especially since they are allowing coverage by Russian media and not American. John Kennedy (the one from Louisiana) said he was very very very tough and mentioned that it wasn’t nice to have a war in Ukraine.
Cheryl Rofer
@nonynony:
As we get down into the details, it gets harder and harder to answer this question. Putin wants division and chaos among Europe and the United States. So betting on the most disrupting and divisive action will get you some insight. But Putin has issues of his own at home, and Trump is not totally controllable.
sdhays
@nonynony: Yes.
Cheryl Rofer
@sdhays: Entirely possible, although his history looks much more ideological and warmongering.
sukabi
@Cheryl Rofer:
So in other words, we should expect to see a compromising video of him with 2 girls, a goat and his Russian handler.
TenguPhule
@sukabi:
If the girls have dicks, yes.
TenguPhule
@nonynony:
Preemptively attack both countries at the same time.
sukabi
@TenguPhule: first laugh I’ve had all morning.?
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
Trump only cares about the approval of Republicans, which holds steady no matter what he does.
And the official propaganda channels, Fox News and Sinclair Broadcast Group, continues to report about Trump’s foreign policy triumphs. And as I noted, Republican leadership is solidly behind Trump, and Democrats don’t have much to say, lest they be accused of being “unpatriotic”
Platonailedit
@Brachiator: So? It’s old news.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I get the sense that Pompeo thinks he can manage this situation, play both ends of crazy to agree to something that trump can call a great victory. I don’t see any scenario that doesn’t involve NK keeping their nukes
from the original article
I don’t get how this is a “masterstroke” by Moon, maybe some extremely pragmatic acceptance of reality, but I don’ live in Seoul or now anything about how South Koreans see this situation.
MattF
Mostly a disaster– but I am pleased to see Bolton being swepts into this. His fans, I predict, will get unhappy and pissed off. Good..
Jager
@efgoldman:
I want trump to be first out the door when the Rangers drop in to get the ball rolling. I’m hoping for a video of the Jump Master putting his foot up trump’s ass to get him to go.
Brachiator
@Cheryl Rofer:
Just another sign of the incompetence of the Trump regime.
And I’ve read that Kim Jong Un consulted with Chinese officials before and maybe after the summit. Meanwhile we have Trump’s insipid bragging that he doesn’t need foreign policy advice because he’s a natural negotiator.
TenguPhule
Via Wapo.
We need a new rule. White people are not allowed to call the police until they pass a basic civics course.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: All right, HEIGHTEN THE CONTRADICTIONS, Mr. Walrus-Mustache.
Jesus Christ, how can *any* of this be going down? How is even the most deranged establishment Republican OK with all this “black is white, Jefferson was the Antichrist” BS?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ROK governments go into this warming of relations with the north and they ALWAYS get burned, ALWAYS. As Madame says, they(the DPRK) can’t be trusted, they lie all the time.
Steve in the ATL
Need a macro that posts “holy fucking shit” in response to everything that trump does
TenguPhule
Oh yes, Tomorrow the Trade War with China officially begins.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
sdhays
@Cheryl Rofer: Yeah, but I’ve stopped expecting any kind of intellectual consistency from Republicans beyond cruelty and corruption. I assume that Trump’s general cruelty and violence is satisfying enough for Bolton to forget everything he said before. Until Trump wants to hear it again.
Mary G
Bolton and his PAC worked with Cambridge Analytica using the stolen Facebook data.
So he’ll probably do whatever Putin wants him to do.
nonynony
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thinking about it further – more than almost anything else, I suspect that Putin probably wants oil prices to go up. It would help him at home quite a bit if energy prices rose and Russia had more money coming in because of it.
Major Major Major Major
@CliosFanBoy: there’s an apartment with a bunch of lefty signs on the window near me that’s been flying the NK flag on and off for months.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@nonynony: I figure we’ll soon see the return of “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Kind of surprised we haven’t yet. The knuckle-draggers’ howls and hoots would break the record set when Sullivan first introduced the Beatles.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: So many trolls on Facebook and Twitter. It was kind of fascinating and horrifying at the same time watching accounts supporting Brexit become Trump supporters and then Le Pen supporters. As if a real person, especially some church-going grandma in Des Moines, would be avidly following, supporting, and tweeting about all those one after the other. They were obviously trolls and bots used to amplify messages.
raven
Ed Schultz died.
Yarrow
@nonynony:
Yep. And it’s one area where what Putin wants will hurt Trump. Americans hate it when oil prices go up. There’s a whole industry set to go covering all aspects of how bad it is when oil prices go up–standing outside “the cheapest gas in town” stations, talking about how “large SUV sales have dropped,” and asking in a concerned tone “How will Americans heat their houses this winter?” We know how to cover that story.
Kelly
@TenguPhule: Blue Oregon mostly reaches to city limits and the north coast. Clackamas is an unincorporated suburb so it’s a mixed zone with lots of racists and the wingnuts.
Mandalay
Sen. Richard Shelby informally surrenders to Putin:
Formal surrender will take place in Helsinki later this month.
Cheryl Rofer
@nonynony:
Yes, although I saw an analysis the other day that rising oil prices won’t help Putin as much as they did in the past. I’m not enough of an economist to have an opinion on that.
Also, Trump has been tweeting that OPEC needs to pump more oil to get oil prices down. They’ve gone up (as everyone’s seen at the pump) because of Trump’s sanctions against Iran. But rising oil prices are generally bad for the party in power in an election.
Mike in DC
Cheryl, slightly tangential, but…do you think Status-6, the alleged 100 megaton warhead equipped Russian doomsday torpedo, is for real? It’s said to be 26m long and 1.8m in diameter, have a range of thousands of km, top speed above 50 knots and max depth of 1000m. Which sounds like something Ed Teller would come up with after a bourbon-and-blow bender.
cliosfanboy
@Manyakitty: I think he dies actually
RP
Am I crazy for thinking that Ed Schultz’s death is a little, uh, odd given his employer?
cliosfanboy
@cliosfanboy: thank should be does, not dies…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RP: maybe, less so given his physique, temperament and IIRC from back when I used to occasionally listen to his show, diet. Lot of talk about big steaks.
jl
Thanks for informative update.
I’ve long thought that dealing with NK nuclear capability is a very long term, difficult management issue, that has been only been made more difficult by GOP’s bad-faith mismanagement for base and partisan short run PR purposes. Nothing in the Trump Great Dealz Leap Forward had changed my opinion.
It’s good that Trump has decided to just declare victory and ignore reality. One thing Trump can do well is read the mood of his intended marks, like any half-way competent swindler, and has judged that a war scare is not the best partisan political move right now. I hope that judgment holds through the midterms and 2020 election.
I guess it depends on the judgment of Trump and Bolton about timing and how soon a swindle going in a bellicose direction can be sold to the US population.
TenguPhule
@Mike in DC:
Also gives the user the sex drive of a wild stallion and the virility of Genghis Khan.
Yeah no, they couldn’t sell that kind of bullshit in science fiction.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
The one tiny bit of good news is that the local cops who get called for this stuff seem to be getting sick of wypipo’s shit, because the cop who showed up took a happy selfie with Bynum and then left again.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike in DC:
No. Nor the atomic-powered cruise missile.
Jager
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I knew Ed Schultz for 20 years, he did like his steaks, we shared meals together so I’ve watched him devour a few. I liked Ed and his wife Wendy Wendy was the biggest reason for his switch from a winger to a lefty. Her work with the underprivileged, really spun his head around. His travels doing his show live from distressed/depressed areas pounded it home to him. Lots of times Ed was all over the place on the issues, but he had a good heart.. He died at his lake place. His neighbor at Detroit Lakes was a life long friend of mine, Small damn world.
Mike in DC
@Cheryl Rofer:
Great. Now Putin can “promise” to dismantle those two nonexistent systems, in exchange for Trump’s capitulation on Syria and Crimea, and perhaps lifting of sanctions down the road. Win-win for them, lose-lose for us.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Cheryl Rofer:
I think Putin’s regime is built on a house of cards. What’s Russia going to look like 30-40 years? I wouldn’t be surprised to see it balkanize further. It’s birthrate is stagnant and who wants to immigrate there that actually matters? There aren’t enough western white supremacists to make up for the shortfall.
sdhays
@jl:
I think this gives him too much credit. I think the best we can hope is that the fact that North Korea is a deeply problematic situation with no easy solutions, and military options would result in massive American casualties (as well as South Korean and Japanese, but he could not care less about them) which might be unpopular and so he has basically decided to pretend to be doing something so he can declare victory and get on with stealing other people’s children and destroying the post-war alliances.
He’s quite stupid. The problem is that for decades massive amounts of money and effort have been put into rotting Americans’ brains and morality, and we weren’t extraordinarily intelligent or moral to begin with.
Cheryl Rofer
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Russia has a lot of problems. I’ve wanted to write a post about them, but there has been so much crazy, my brain has slowed down, plus I find myself necessarily responding to the latest outrage/ failure/ goat rodeo.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Kelly: Yep. And the State has historically been very hostile to black people specifically, reflected in the unusually low black population in Oregon. When founded in the 1800s, Oregon was officially off limits to black citizens, and many “sundown towns” across the State persisted well into the Twentieth Century. We have a lot of work to do in Oregon to make the State more welcoming for our black neighbors, and I view criminal justice reform/civil rights and targeted economic development for black families and businesses as high priorities. But we do have a lot of racism and ignorance all over the State, and it is more pronounced outside of a few blue bubbles.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@sdhays:
LOL – Very quotable
Mnemosyne
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
A Japanese-American coworker of mine visited Portland a few years ago and felt uncomfortable there, like they didn’t know how to react to having an Asian-American among them.
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
Including a shrinking population. Perhaps Dolt 45 will try to offer them thousands of children. “Win-win. MAGA!”
Mike in DC
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: The quickest way for Russia to lose their “great power” status (I think they’re 8th out of 8, like Fascist Italy in 1939) is to ramp up the deployment of renewables and the production of electric cars. If we can drive the price of oil permanently below 20 dollars a barrel, their economy will crater and they won’t even have the money to maintain a modern army.
We can buy their nukes in a yard sale at that point.
VOR
@Cheryl Rofer: We had plans for something like that back in the 50s-60s called SLAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_Low_Altitude_Missile
Raven Onthill
“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” applies to this, too, I think. Something about “Republicans can say irrational longer than the world can stay at peace.”
Cheryl Rofer
@VOR: Yes, and we never fielded it.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Seriously, he’s a believer, in belligerence and armed conflict.
Not so seriously, it would be irresponsible not to speculate: young blood is said to be … not cheap. Gawker received a tip, which we were unable to verify, claiming that Thiel “spends $40,000 per quarter to get an infusion of blood from an 18-year-old
Also https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/ambrosia-the-startup-harvesting-the-blood-of-the-young
Would be much cheaper if the US goes full fascist; then The Leaders simply demonize, then designate, a blood-donating class of young people.
J R in WV
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) :
Are you sure? They can have all of them…
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Don’t feel bad, we’re all there with you. Who knew there could be so much goat rodeo?