May 24, 2018

We'll never have Singapore

00:16:37

Summary

Main Topic: The cancellation of the US-North Korea summit and the implications of the failed diplomacy.

Key Points:

The US-North Korea summit was canceled due to disagreements over denuclearization, with the US insisting on a "Libya model" where North Korea would quickly give up its nuclear program, and North Korea rejecting this approach.
The US administration's statements on the Libya model, including those made by John Bolton and Mike Pence, were seen as threatening and led to a deterioration in relations with North Korea.
North Korea's reaction to the US statements was to reconsider the summit, and eventually, the US canceled the meeting.
The cancellation of the summit has left the US and North Korea in a precarious position, with some experts predicting a return to 2017 levels of tensions and even war.
The episode also discusses the implications of the US pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Iran summit, and how this may affect the US's credibility on the world stage.

Participants:

Johnny Harris, Vox reporter in Hong Kong
Alex Ward, defense reporter at Vox
Sean Ramos, host of Today Explained

The cancellation of the US-North Korea summit highlights the difficulties of diplomacy with North Korea and the need for a more nuanced approach.
The US administration's statements on the Libya model were seen as threatening and led to a deterioration in relations with North Korea.
The US's credibility on the world stage may be affected by its decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Iran summit.
The episode highlights the need for a more careful and considered approach to diplomacy with North Korea, and the potential consequences of a failure to engage in meaningful dialogue.

Show Notes

President Trump cancelled his historic Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un today. The announcement comes after a North Korean official called Vice President Pence “ignorant and stupid” for likening their country to Libya, which crumbled after it gave up its nuclear program. Vox’s Alex Ward explains what went wrong and why war is back on the table. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram.

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Sean Rameswaram: Today, President Trump canceled his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The announcement comes after a North Korean official called Vice President Pence "ignorant and stupid" for likening their country to Libya, which crumbled after it gave up its nuclear program. Joining me to explain what went wrong and why war is back on the table is Johnny Harris, a Vox reporter in Hong Kong.

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Johnny Harris: Thanks for having me on the show.

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Sean Rameswaram: So, Johnny, I've heard you've been traveling with your Quip electric toothbrush, which I've heard travels nicely. I know you've hardly been sleeping and hardly been brushing, but it's been a few days of traveling now, yeah?

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Johnny Harris: Yeah, I've been brushing my teeth in the morning and in the evening. It's now, I think, becoming a habit. Finally. And, yeah, they're right. This toothbrush is pretty darn good for travel, I have to say.

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Sean Rameswaram: The White House has a gift shop online, and earlier this week, it started selling commemorative coins to mark the upcoming summit between the United States and North Korea. The coins feature the faces of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

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Johnny Harris: They're staring each other down in front of their respective flags under the words, Peace Talks. Today, the item was discounted and updated. It says, the ornament will be made whether or not the summit occurs as scheduled, which is for the best because... President Trump just released a letter with his signature and everything telling Chairman Kim Jong-un from North Korea, this comments off.

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Sean Rameswaram: Alex Ward is a defense reporter at Vox. It's by far like the worst breakup letter I've ever seen. It says, please do not hesitate to call me or Wright. He's basically reverting back to the, I have a bigger button, so be very careful. I have a bigger arsenal than you do, but I still kind of want to talk. I'd still like to meet.

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Johnny Harris: So, you know, like I have nukes, so call me maybe. Well, I feel like there's a lot of news here to unpack. Maybe we can do it sort of step by step.

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Sean Rameswaram: So in March, Trump agreed to a summit based on the invitation by North Korea, which was relayed by South Korean officials. President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-un. And since then, there's been this scurry to make a summit happen, finding a date, finding a location, and then most importantly, what they will talk about.

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Johnny Harris: So how did that fall apart? That started when you had John Bolton, President Donald Trump's mustachioed national security advisor, go on different news shows, Sunday news shows. Will President Trump insist that Kim give up, ship out all of his nuclear weapons, all of his nuclear fuel, all of his ballistic missiles before the U.S. makes any concessions?

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Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think that's what denuclearization means. And we have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004. What's the Libya model?

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Johnny Harris: When Libya gave up its middling nuclear program in 2003, they did it fairly quickly and had no programs. The reason this was a bad thing to say is because in 2011, with American help, Western air power deposed the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Right. And there were videos of him being tortured publicly. It's pretty bad, right?

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Sean Rameswaram: So Kim Jong-un very likely internalized that. The lesson that North Korea has learned is we need to have nuclear weapons. Otherwise, there could be an American-led invasion of North Korea deposing me.

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Johnny Harris: Were other people in the Trump administration banding about this message, sort of, you know, we're going to do the Libya model, or was it just Bolton?

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Sean Rameswaram: So Vice President Mike Pence said the same thing. On top of that, kind of went even further. You know as the president made clear you know this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un makes a deal

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Johnny Harris: It effectively boiled down to make a deal or we will kill you. So how did North Korea react to Bolton's statements and Pence's statements?

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Sean Rameswaram: So that's when things started to go really bad. Then you had high-level North Korean officials start to put out statements saying, like, you know, we might reconsider the U.S. summit now.

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Johnny Harris: You know, this is irresponsible. And that kind of cycle started to keep coming. Like, every time a U.S. official went on, you had Pompeo, Pence, Bolton. They would talk about, again, the Libya model. North Korea would keep coming out with statements saying, like, you know, we might—we're reconsidering the summit.

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Sean Rameswaram: This may not happen. And you guys are actually threatening us. And on top of that, we have never said we're going to give up our nuclear weapons. You guys keep insisting that we will. That's an imposition. We're not going to do that.

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Johnny Harris: And now we're here. So now President Trump has canceled the summit. He's canceled the summit. We're not going to be in Singapore on June 12th. And what's his reasoning exactly?

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Sean Rameswaram: Based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time to have this long planned meeting.

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Johnny Harris: So it seems like he's reacting to the angry statements from North Korea based on their animus towards Bolton and Pence right now.

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Sean Rameswaram: So John Bolton canceled the North Korea summit. That's what they say. What I want to be very careful of here, though, is North Korea has a long, long, long history of saying they're going to do the extraordinary thing and then pulling out or finding some way to scuttle it.

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Johnny Harris: North Korea clearly didn't like what Bolton and Pence and the administration was saying. That's clear. But it's also possible that North Korea used that opportunity to find a way to scuttle the deal or at least pressure Trump to give North Korea what it wanted.

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Sean Rameswaram: It's hard to know exactly how sincere North Korea was about this, right? Trump canceled it, clearly, based on this letter. And now we don't know what happens. What does North Korea do next?

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Johnny Harris: That's in a minute on Today Explained. Johnny, you started at getquipped.com slash explained. The brushes start at $25. You upgraded to a chrome one. You're going to get a free refill soon.

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Sean Rameswaram: But more important than any of that, you became a twice-a-day brusher, right? So, yeah, I think this has become a habit, this twice-a-day thing.

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Johnny Harris: I mean, maybe everyone needs to be called out on a podcast ad to really push them to brush twice a day. But it worked for me.

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Sean Rameswaram: I think I need to as well because I'm eating a lot of like meat and stuff, you know, like dim sum. And it's just brushing is becoming more imperative with the cuisine here.

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Johnny Harris: Right. And you're in Hong Kong. And last we heard you were going to go check out some houses that are the size of coffins.

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Sean Rameswaram: So the thing is with Hong Kong, it's actually the most expensive housing market in the world. And so basically people every year have to squeeze into smaller and smaller spaces because they can't afford any more space.

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Johnny Harris: And what I'm here doing is basically telling the story of why that is. It's a really interesting macroeconomic policy story that contributes to these insane prices.

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Sean Rameswaram: And yeah, that's kind of what I'm trying to chase down here.

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Johnny Harris: Can't wait to see what you come up with. And, you know, thank God Quip toothbrushes are reasonably priced.

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Sean Rameswaram: Was this always too good to be true? It was always really unlikely that they would come to some sort of agreement on nuclear weapons based on the two positions that they had laid out.

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Johnny Harris: Yeah. The U.S. said dismantle your nuclear program very quickly. And what we'll do is we will give you some economic inducements in order to help your infrastructure and electricity and basically bring American companies in or at least just financial assistance.

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Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. On the North Korean side, they said, well, we might give some concessions away. And that could mean giving up its intercontinental ballistic missiles in exchange for some concessions on the American side

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Johnny Harris: But the big issue there is North Korea wanted to do that slowly. So you kind of had this big bang approach on the US side and really just give us everything. And North Korea saying we can give you some slowly. Those were two irreconcilable differences.

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Sean Rameswaram: And what usually happens, right, in regular diplomacy is you have lower level staffers work out the differences behind the scenes, come to some sort of framework. And then the big guys, in this case, Trump and Kim come into the meeting and they finalize the deal.

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Johnny Harris: Yeah. But Trump and Kim couldn't meet. They just had nothing to talk about. They were on completely different sides of this issue.

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Sean Rameswaram: Is this ultimately a lesson that like flipping diplomacy on its head and just saying like, fuck it, let's let's just go for it doesn't work. There's a reason we do things through certain channels.

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Johnny Harris: You could learn that lesson. I mean, there's also an argument to say that, you know, this is the furthest we've ever gone diplomacy wise, really, with North Korea.

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Sean Rameswaram: I mean, we've had now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He's met with Kim twice. Yeah. We've never had anything like that.

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Johnny Harris: And you can make an argument that Trump has had the most success diplomatically with North Korea ever. Yeah. And let's be clear. Trump was able to rescue three American hostages from North Korea.

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Sean Rameswaram: And maybe he got one of their nuclear sites completely destroyed, shut down. Right. There are issues about whether it was usable or not. But still, that's kind of nice. It's a thing. It's a thing. If it's a thing.

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Johnny Harris: But there are clearly points on the board for us. But then ultimately, where does this leave us? The United States got some hostages back, got a nuclear site destroyed, but any progress towards the summit was just a race.

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Sean Rameswaram: Right. But now we have to wonder what happens next, right? And based on experts I've talked to, and I should give credit especially to MIT's Vipin Narang, who walked me through four possible scenarios of what may happen now that the summit is canceled. Give them to me.

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Johnny Harris: Scenario one?

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Sean Rameswaram: Scenario one, they just delay the summit. North Korea and the U.S. go, we're not going to meet now. They will find a different day, but they will have this conversation in the future.

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Johnny Harris: Okay. The lower level staffers will work out some sort of middle ground possibly. Then Trump and Kim come in and finalize the deal.

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Sean Rameswaram: By the way, these scenarios are ranked from like best case to worst case. Okay. So that's the best case scenario, right? That's the good one. That's the good one.

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Johnny Harris: Scenario two?

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Sean Rameswaram: Scenario two, the summit is delayed, but they make no progress. Nothing ever happens.

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Johnny Harris: Big picture, we've never really been this calm with North Korea in a really long time. So they might not make progress towards a new summit, but the status quo holds.

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Sean Rameswaram: Scenario three.

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Johnny Harris: Scenario three is when it starts to get bad. As Vipin put it, the temperature rises just as quickly as it falls, and we go back to 2017.

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Sean Rameswaram: In 2017, the U.S. and North Korea spent an inordinate amount of time threatening to bomb each other. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

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Johnny Harris: And you had North Korea basically, as Kim Jong-un said, vowing to make President Trump, quote, pay dearly, calling him a mentally deranged dotard or senile old man.

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Sean Rameswaram: And there was a real feeling that the U.S. and North Korea were going to war. So what's scenario number four?

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Johnny Harris: Scenario number four is they do the unfathomable and they go to war. The U.S. and North Korea realize diplomacy has not worked, and now America cannot stand a nuclear North Korea.

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Sean Rameswaram: And so in order to forcibly disarm it, we have to go to war.

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Johnny Harris: So those are all the hypotheticals, but what about right now? Was this some kind of a win for North Korea? They wanted the U.S. to cancel this meeting.

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Sean Rameswaram: They wanted to look like they were the reasonable ones and that the U.S. was extorting them to give up its nuclear weapons.

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Johnny Harris: And then when the U.S. would not change its position and in fact threatened Kim directly, right, with this Libya model talk, that looks bad on the U.S.

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Sean Rameswaram: Right, because the whole point of saying we'll talk is to talk.

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Johnny Harris: So you're sort of in this moment where North Korea lost what it really wanted, which was recognition on the world stage.

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Sean Rameswaram: But it did make the U.S. look bad in this moment. Just a few weeks ago, when the United States pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, the thinking was, how does this make the country look for its upcoming negotiations with North Korea.

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Johnny Harris: Now the United States is pulled out of those negotiations. So how does the country look on a global stage?

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Sean Rameswaram: I think what we learned from this month right. We pulled out of the Iran deal in May and we pulled out of a possible summit with Kim in May. So this month has taught us that Trump may not be the most trustworthy when it comes to keeping America's word on past deals.

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Johnny Harris: And he may not be that trustworthy when he's trying to make future deals.

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Sean Rameswaram: Now, it's hard to know what will happen when Trump leaves. But at least in this moment in time, as long as he's the Oval Office occupant, it's going to be very, very hard for other countries to trust his word.

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Johnny Harris: Even our own Pentagon says that North Korea views nuclear weapons as a safeguard against a U.S.-led invasion.

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Sean Rameswaram: So if our own Pentagon is telling our own leadership that, then it's really hard to ask North Korea to give up that thing.

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Johnny Harris: So I don't understand, deal-making-wise, why you're asking for the one thing our own intelligence community and our own Pentagon are saying they will not give.

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Sean Rameswaram: And maybe it doesn't matter anymore, Right. I mean, based on what President Trump said today, it seems like the United States is already heading down a different path.

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Johnny Harris: I've spoken to General Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our military, which is by far the most powerful anywhere in the world that has been greatly enhanced recently, as you all know, is ready if necessary.

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Sean Rameswaram: You have to give Trump some sort of credit in the sense that he has been truthful in what he has said, right? In the sense of, like, I'm going to pull out of the Paris Agreement. I'm going to pull out of the Iran deal.

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Johnny Harris: But on North Korea, he said, I will promise that North Korea will never get an ICBM. It has it. It also has a hydrogen bomb.

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Sean Rameswaram: And now he's vowing that a nuclear North Korea will not exist on his watch.

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Johnny Harris: So that scares me. Now that there's no diplomacy to be had, does now the president decide that he has to make the toughest choice, which is go to war in order to ensure that his promise is kept, that there will be no nuclear North Korea on his watch.

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Sean Rameswaram: Thanks, Johnny, for joining us today.

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Johnny Harris: Thanks for having me on the show.

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Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram, and this is Today Explained.

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Sean Rameswaram: If you want to hear more about what's happening in the world, check out our other episodes. And if you want to support our show, you can go to vox.com/contribute.

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