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The U.S.-Korea alliance is “in jeopardy” & it’s not even (mostly) Trump’s fault

MAKING THE ROUNDS IN WASHINGTON THIS WEEK IS THIS MUST-READ REPORT, in Tokyo Business Today, by Stanford Professor Daniel Sneider: “Behind The Chaos Of Washington’s Korea Policy.” The report is based on Sneider’s discussions with insiders familiar with the administration’s North Korea negotiations and policymaking, and yes, you should be worried:

[T]he spoken, and unspoken, aim of most professionals implementing North Korea policy is to hold off President Trump from meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again. They worry about a repeat of the June spectacle in Singapore when Trump made significant concessions that undercut their attempts to seriously negotiate with the North. Beneath the chaos, emanating mostly from the Oval Office, a four-sided containment policy exists ”“ containment of North Korea, of South Korea’s Moon administration, of China, and, most of all, containment of Donald Trump. [Daniel Sneider, Tokyo Business Today]

A view shared by everyone but Trump himself is that, contra Agreed Framework III, Pyongyang has no intention of denuclearizing.

Inside the national security bureaucracy, there are no illusions that the suspension of testing of missiles and warheads by the North Koreans represents a move towards abandoning their nuclear capability. “The North Koreans are liars,” a veteran of previous talks with Pyongyang told me. “I am not expecting happy results on denuclearization,” a senior official who has participated in the talks said.

Every attempt to move to the specifics of denuclearization, including the July visit by Secretary Pompeo, has gone nowhere. North Korean officials refused to discuss concrete steps such as a declaration of North Korean nuclear facilities.

Here’s a consistent report on Pompeo’s efforts to get Pyongyang to declare its nuclear facilities, and Pyongyang’s refusal to provide one.

Instead the North Koreans keep referring to the Singapore declaration and insisting they reached agreement with Trump to move first towards an ‘end to hostilities,’ beginning with dumping the existing armistice agreement that is part of the foundation for the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

Indeed, when Pompeo tried to press the case for denuclearization steps, his North Korean counterpart Kim Yong Chol held up a cell phone and taunted him ”“ “why don’t you call your president?”

Also — sit down for this — China is playing us to evict us from Korea, and Trump’s advisers think he gave away the store in Singapore and are terrified of him giving away even more in another summit. It’s not news that our enemies connive against us, but the connivance of our friends (or, depending on your perspective, sponsors) in Seoul has sown deep mistrust of Moon Jae-in.

The second pillar of consensus is a deep concern that the South Korean government of Moon Jae-in, which has driven the opening to North Korea, is no longer bound by the need to move in tight coordination with Washington. Some even fear the alliance itself may be in jeopardy.

[….]

Inside the national security bureaucracy, there is growing alarm over relations with South Korea. On the surface, President Moon and his government continue to support U.S. diplomacy and reinforce its messages to Pyongyang. But things are starting to shift, with Seoul telling administration officials that the nuclear issue is basically between the U.S. and North Korea and that they want to separate their engagement with the North from progress on that issue.

“We have a big problem coming with South Korea,” a senior official involved in the talks told me. “It has reached the point where the South Koreans are determined to press ahead. They no longer feel the need to act in parallel with us.”

Moon is planning a visit next month to Pyongyang. He is eager to proceed with projects such as rail and pipe lines that will run from South, through the North, to Russia and China, as he outlined in a recent address.

Some officials warn that the U.S. is prepared to sanction South Korea if it proceeds. They believe Moon will not risk the domestic political cost of showing a visible gap with the U.S., particularly as his popular support is starting to soften. But others worry that a tough response may just deepen the split.

To be more precise, the U.S. could take any number of actions, such as civil penalties and civil forfeiture suits, against the South Korean banks and companies that broke U.N. and (probably also) U.S. sanctions without sanctioning “South Korea.” Not all sanctions are binary; one must understand what they are and how they work to understand how they can be targeted and used. I’ve suggested a few of them for this very situation. If we penalized, say, a South Korean bank, the Blue House would probably go on pretending it didn’t “know” about the violations, despite recent confirmation by the National Intelligence Service that it told the Blue House last October. One report even claims that the Blue House obstructed the investigation.1

The very idea that South Korea is not above the law has elicited cries of “Quelle horreur!” from Foggy Bottom to DuPont Circle — from those who are still stuck in a 50s view of South Korea as a beleaguered, freedom-loving ally, and from those who are still stuck in a 90s view of South Korea as an ally with a liberal president experimenting with untested ideas of enticing Pyongyang into reform and disarmament. Of course, those ideas were tested decades ago, and the experiment failed. But to some, an alliance obligates us to synchronize ourselves to South Korea’s unilateral policy vacillations and mood swings, even in violation of eleven U.N. Security Council resolutions and at the sacrifice of our own core national security interests because peace.

Naturally, the United States doesn’t get to shift its own policies so impulsively when we recalibrate our interests — and I agree that we shouldn’t. There’s something to be said for the Madman Theory, but Nixon could pull that off because his advisors and allies all knew he was faking it. The fact that our closest allies and cabinet secretaries can’t predict the caprices of our Government-of-One is now doing lasting damage to our interests. But where do Moon Jae-in and his defenders get off arguing as if he has carte blanche to violate eleven U.N. Security Council resolutions behind our backs — resolutions that the U.S. drafted and pushed through the Security Council for South Korea’s protection as well as our own? To its credit, the administration is holding firm that Pyongyang must denuclearize before we lift sanctions, at least for now. After all, if South Korea is above the laws that its power companies and banks are breaking by laundering dollars to Pyongyang in flagrante delicto, how can we expect the Chinese, Russians, or Malaysians to comply?

It’s possible that Moon would react to, say, a forfeiture case or a penalty assessment by appealing to nationalism, but only up to a point. He and his confidants may anticipate “spontaneous” mass outrage against the Yankees in two or three years, over some traffic accident or an assault by an American soldier in Itaewon — after whatever they have in mind for the next summit with Kim Jong-un is signed, sealed, delivered, and irreversible, but not at this delicate stage. The last thing Moon needs as his popularity is declining3 and he prepares for that next summit is a split with the U.S. because South Korea willfully violated a slew of Chapter VII U.N. Security Council resolutions. Banks and companies that broke rules set by the U.N. probably won’t make very sympathetic martyrs. Furthermore, George W. Bush isn’t President anymore. Moon knows that Trump’s reaction to the flag-burning and violence this rhetoric will inevitably inspire won’t be a public apology. Moon knows he can only push Trump so far before the alliance breaks and causes a serious domestic backlash.4 Would Moon have to suppress, split, and alienate his own base to prevent this? Would he end up groveling to Trump to get him to keep troops in Korea, with all the attendant loss of national pride this would mean? Would this give the National Assembly pause about ratifying Moon’s next deal with Kim?

In conclusion, the uniquely volatile combination of Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in is blowing up, just as I’d predicted it would before either man assumed office. That’s why I find Sneider’s report to be both absolutely horrifying and absolutely plausible. Of course, if you’re reading this on a government computer and want to rebut or deny it, you know how to find me. We’re probably overdue for coffee anyway.

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1. This also tells us several other things: first, the National Intelligence Service doesn’t sound very happy with Moon Jae-in; and second, we can expect to see a purge of the NIS in the near future on some pretext or another.

2. Those suspicions, and the loss of public confidence they give rise to, wouldn’t be hard to overcome. All they’d require is that the scholar or her employer publish a disclaimer, stating, “This [researcher/foundation/etc.] does not accept contributions from foreign sources, including governments, government officials, or corporations. The names of our donors can be accessed at this [insert hyperlink] page.”

3. The latest poll from the Asan Institute has it down to 54 percent, probably because of the terrible economy. A sharp economic decline in the South, combined with subsidies to Pyongyang, would have the benefit of reducing the economic disparity between North Korean elites and most South Koreans, although I doubt Moon expected the economy to fall this much or this soon. I’m not suggesting that this was planned; it’s too politically inconvenient.

4. For a more politely worded expression of concern about the health of the alliance, see this, from Patrick Cronin and Kristine Lee.