Donald Trump deserves ‘little credit’ for North and South Korean peace agreement, experts say
"Pyongyang Is Playing Washington and Seoul .. with comment .. Also, Trump's decision on the Iran deal, due by May 12, will be important as if he does what he has threatened to do continuously during and since his election campaign then if you were in North Korean shoes you wouldn't be impressed. No one could argue with any credibility that Trump's word is his bond."
He seized on the signing of a peace agreement to say the American people 'should be proud'
Mythili Sampathkumar New York @MythiliSk 2 days ago
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US President Donald Trump has taken some credit for the peace agreement between North Korea and South Korea, but experts have said he deserves little of it.
In a historic and opulent ceremony, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) to sign the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula during the Inter-Korean Summit and officially ended the war that began when the north and south split in a battle over communism and democracy that began on 25 June 1950.
After the summit on Friday morning, the US president immediately tweeted: “KOREAN WAR TO END! The United States, and all of its GREAT people, should be very proud of what is now taking place in Korea!” implying that he played an important part in it.
“When I began, people were saying that was an impossibility,” Mr Trump said meeting with US Winter Olympics athletes who participated in this year’s games in South Korea. “They said there were two alternatives: Let them have what they have, or go to war. And now we have a much better alternative than anybody thought even possible”.
Dr TJ Pempel, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley told The Independent while Mr Trump “deserves some credit but not as much as he’s taking”. While the United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang involved the US push from Ambassador Nikki Haley, that is “hardly the whole story”, Mr Pempel said.
“China’s agreement to the sanctions was far more important,” he noted. The important point to note, he said, was that North Korea developed its nuclear programme considerably after Mr Trump took office. “The North is convinced that it has the upper hand in negotiations because of its nuclear and missile testing successes; the US thinks it has the upper hand because it believes Kim is negotiating because of the sanctions. It’s the combination that has triggered the North’s willingness to sit down”.
In a sign that perhaps Mr Trump recognises he was not the catalyst for the agreement, he also tweeted on Friday: “Please do not forget the great help that my good friend, President Xi [Jinping] of China...particularly at the Border of North Korea. Without him it would have been a much longer, tougher, process!”
VIDEO - Donald Trump says he ‘believes’ North Korea leader Kim Jong Un about peace talks -0:36
Mr Pempel said Pyongyang will not fully denuclearise given the trajectory of other world leaders after they gave up nuclear weapons and development programmes. They are looking towards Iraq and Libya, whose leaders Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were both killed as a result of western military intervention.
Several experts have noted that North Korea also sees Iran as a key example of how Pyongyang could be treated as well. Mr trump has repeatedly said he is considering ditching the Iran nuclear deal – formally known as the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It was a key foreign policy achievement of former President Barack Obama.
Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both met with Mr Trump to urge him not to leave the historic agreement which involves France, Germany, the UK, Russia, China, and the US.
Though the Trump administration agreed Iran’s nuclear programme is a major threat, the president announced in October 2017 he would not re-certify a nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers. Despite the evidence provided by the United Nations on Tehran’s compliance with the deal, Mr Trump said it was too lenient on Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has backed Mr Macron’s stance on the deal.
INSIDE - North Korea – South Korea relations: in pictures
The administration continues to say the country has violated portions of it. Not re-certifying the deal or abandoning it will open the door for harsher economic sanctions to be placed on the country, the mitigation of which was a key inducement for Iran to comply with the historic deal. What concerns many Washington insiders is that Mr Trump’s newest hire as National Security Adviser John Bolton is quite hawkish on pulling out of the deal as is his newly-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has called the agreement “disastrous”.
“Why should Kim think North Korea without nukes would be treated differently?,” Mr Pempel asked, adding that the the US “is a definite player in this drama and any deal brokered without a US sign-off will not work,” but it remains to be seen if Mr Trump’s personal presence will detract or foster better relations and an actual agreement of some kind.
Alison Evans, Deputy Head of Asia Pacific Country Risk, at the research firm IHS Markit said her “assessment is that Trump should receive minimal, if any, credit”.
Ms Evans said that the president’s “high-pressure tactics only confirmed to North Korea that they were on the right course...developing {and now maintaining) nuclear weapons for their safety”. However, she said that the meeting between Mr Moon and Mr Kim was a positive indicator that the planned meeting between the North Korean leader and Mr Trump next month is “more than likely to go ahead”.
She said that “like the Kim-Moon joint statement calling for denuclearisation of peninsula, it is probable that North Korea will agree to some language referring to nuclear weapons in a statement after the Kim-Moon or planned Kim-Trump summit” but that they may want it to apply to the whole peninsula, not just Pyongyang.
N. Korea threatens to pull out of Trump-Kim summit over denuclearization demands
"Pyongyang Is Playing Washington and Seoul"
“We will appropriately respond to the Trump administration if it approaches the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations,” North Korea’s first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is pictured. | STR/AFP/Getty Images
It was the second indication from Pyongyang within a matter of hours that it was reconsidering its positions.
By CRISTIANO LIMA 05/15/2018 03:35 PM EDT Updated 05/15/2018 11:57 PM EDT
Bottom line is that North Korea have never said they would be open to giving up their nuclear weapons. Yet that is prominent among Trump demands.
See also:
mr40 -- I believe it's fair to say that many who are expert in such matters have expressed concern that there does not appear to have been anywhere near the sort of preparation for a Trump-Kim summit that there should have been -- if we're going to have such a summit, we should be going in knowing it'll be a{t least some kind of) success, rather than going in with any chance it'll just blow up and sink -- in particular in this instance where a blow up and sink scenario could well set the stage for a quick move to war https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140382074
President Trump attends a news conference following his second summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Feb. 28 in Hanoi. (Tuan Mark/Getty Images)
By Josh Rogin Columnist February 28
Trump administration officials constantly say the foreign policy establishment’s decades-long failure with North Korea meant there was no choice but to give Trump’s fresh, personal, top-down method a fair trial. Today the verdict is in. Trump’s approach has failed, and Pyongyang is happily reaping the rewards.
But by securing an extension of the process while giving up nothing on denuclearization, Kim can continue improving his country’s nuclear and missile capabilities, benefit from an ever-eroding sanctions regime and enjoy his elevated status as a newly respected member of the international community.
The real question is: Did Kim plan it this way? Did he lure Trump to Hanoi only to set demands he knew the United States could never agree to, while holding Trump’s hand .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsj9wZW7N7Q .. so he would acquiesce? There’s plenty of evidence that’s exactly what happened.
We know much of this because Trump laid it out in his news conference before heading home. He said Kim had offered to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility but only in exchange for total sanctions relief.
“They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that,” Trump said. “.?.?. We had to walk away from that.”
Trump is correct; that would be a terrible deal. Yongbyon represents a small and antiquated portion of Kim’s nuclear infrastructure. But Trump can’t claim that he was surprised by that bad offer. CNN reported that Trump’s top officials told him for days this was Kim’s position and Kim would not budge.
Special envoy Stephen Biegun had been negotiating with his North Korean counterparts for weeks, but he couldn’t get the North Koreans to do more, like hand over a declaration of what they have. The notion that Trump, charismatic dealmaker that he is, could bridge that gap in a couple of meetings was never plausible.
No one is pushing harder for a U.S.-North Korea deal than the South Korean government. If it knew the United States could not accept the deal Kim was putting forward, of course Kim knew that as well. He’s evil but not stupid. ADVERTISING
Most likely, Kim’s offer was a poison pill, meant to signal just enough flexibility to get Trump to Hanoi but to ensure that the negotiations would fail. Trump walked directly into the trap and doesn’t even seem to realize it.
On top of all that, Trump committed two huge, unforced errors. He refused to say the negotiation’s goal was to fully denuclearize North Korea. “I don’t want to put myself in that position, from the standpoint of negotiation,” he said. That contradicts everything his officials keep saying and actually weakens his own negotiating position.
Trump also let Kim off the hook for the treatment of Otto Warmbier, the American hostage who died days after being returned from imprisonment in North Korea. By accepting Kim’s claim he wasn’t aware of Warmbier’s treatment, Trump once again believed a dictator over his own officials while undermining any future attempts by Warmbier’s family to hold Kim responsible for their son’s death.
There’s another choice besides this negotiation and going to war — a mix of deterrence, containment and a return to maximum pressure, coordinated with our allies. That’s likely where we will end up anyway and the longer we wait to pivot, the harder it will be.
As Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said, the Hanoi summit showed us “amateur hour with nuclear weapons at stake and the limits of reality-TV diplomacy.”
Trump may see a personal political benefit to dragging out his love affair with Kim and dragging the world along with them on this Sisyphean effort. But the stink of this summit’s failure and the danger of the North Korean threat are only increasing over time. No deal is better than a bad deal — but Trump getting played by Kim again and again is even worse.
North Korea's Kim says must deliver 'blow' to those imposing sanctions: KCNA
Joyce Lee April 11, 2019 / 8:11 AM / Updated 15 hours ago
[...]
Moon has suggested that sanctions could be eased to allow inter-Korean economic engagement in return for some nuclear concessions by North Korea, but so far Washington has not agreed.
“It did not directly mention the U.S., but linked sanctions with hostile forces,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “He’s saying North Korea would take an independent course unless the U.S. offered to lift sanctions. You maintain sanctions, you’re a hostile force; if you ease sanctions, you’re not.”
There would be further Trump fuzzies to Kim not included here.
More:
shermann7, Trump, Kim and the North Korean nuclear missile melodrama [...] Excerpt P - This was widely accepted as the paradigm undergirding North Korea’s approach to nuclear development, dating back to the first nuclear crisis of 1993–94. That crisis was eventually resolved when the 1994 Agreed Framework was adopted, shuttering the North’s plutonium-fuelled reactor at Yongbyon and freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear activities under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, in return for supplies of heavy fuel oil and promises to build proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors.[45] The significance of the Agreed Framework as a diplomatic breakthrough in US–North Korea relations, culminating in the October 2000 visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is largely forgotten in the United States. The agreement fell apart following US revelations in 2002 that North Korea was operating a secret uranium-enrichment program.[46] While some have disputed whether North Korea technically infringed the Agreed Framework,[47] that the regime invested in a clandestine uranium enrichment program suggests it was never committed to the goal of denuclearisation. As a result, cheating is widely assumed to be a given of entering into non-proliferation agreements with Pyongyang.[48] Proponents maintain that in exchange for the right mix of material inducements, North Korea’s weapons development would have been substantially slowed, if never completely halted, considerably delaying the day when its nuclear aims would move out into the open. P - Kim Jong-un began to ramp up the missile and nuclear development programs he inherited from his father shortly after taking the reins in December 2011. The inflection point came in 2012, with the decision to constitutionally enshrine North Korea’s status as a “nuclear state and an unchallengeable military power”.[49] By committing his prestige at such an early stage, Kim Jong-un was effectively hitching his leadership to the overt acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them. With the weight of the Kim dynasty legacy officially behind it, North Korea’s nuclear deterrent was henceforth irreversible, in North Korean terms. At a December 2017 ceremony, bestowing awards on the scientists behind North Korea’s apparently successful ICBM design, the Hwasong-15, Kim Jong-un committed to further “bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity”.[50] Subsequent North Korean statements have repeated claims to be a nuclear weapon state. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=141107196 [...] Infrastructure Improvements at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=144264798
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