Negotiating with the North: Talks and Tactics
Gary Samore is skeptical that total denuclearization is possible, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t progress to be made.
It was one small step for a dictator, and one giant leap for the Korean people.
The idea of Kim Jong-un crossing the 38th parallel to engage in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in might have seemed outlandish just six months ago, yet there he was, the grandson of Kim Il-sung, becoming the first supreme leader to cross the border in more than 65 years.
Recent negotiations between North Korea, South Korea, and the United States have been unorthodox in both form and timing with new developments coming fast and furious.
In this first part of a series of episodes on the ongoing negotiations, we’re joined by Gary Samore, the executive director for research at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, who has a long history representing the United States in talks with North Korean negotiators. Samore describes the history of North Korea’s nuclear program and why past international efforts to dismantle it have failed.
Each week on PolicyCast, Host Matt Cadwallader (@mattcad) explores the ways individuals make democracy work by speaking with the world’s leading experts in public policy, media, and international affairs about their experiences confronting our most pressing public problems.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was automatically generated and only lightly edited.
Matt: Watching Kim Jong Un take that first step into South Korea was, for me, unexpectedly moving. Obviously this type of thing is highly coordinated, but I couldn’t help getting caught up in the symbolism. What were your thoughts witnessing it?
Dr. Samore: Well it’s very powerful for the Korean people, who of course, have suffered by being divided since the end of the Korean War, and who really hope for piece, and I think in my discussions last week in Seoul, mainly with government officials and think tanks affiliated with the government, they’re making the argument that despite 30 years of deception and disappointment, this time the North Koreans are really serious about making piece and giving up their nuclear weapons. And the argument really centers around Kim Jong Un himself and experts who’ve studied him in South Korea says he’s not his father, he’s not his grandfather. He’s genuinely interested in improving the North Korean economy so that the North Koreans have more freedoms and independence from China and he understands that in order to improve the economy and get sanctions lifted and attract trade and investment, he’s gonna have to make peace with South Korea, and he’s gonna have to give up nuclear weapons to the satisfaction of the United States.
So what I heard over and over again, from my South Korean friends, is that this is a top down process. That Kim Jong Un has made a decision, made a strategic decision. He’s driving this process, and they expressed, in my mind, remarkable optimism that within a few years he would be willing to give up his nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief, security insurances, and economic assistance. Well we’ll see, of course, whether that’s true. I’m deeply skeptical because I’ve seen this movie at least two times before, but I hope for the best, and certainly talking about negotiations is much better than talking about a bloody nose.
Matt: Take us back a little bit —the North Korean nuclear program started in the 1980s. Why did they start the program in the first place?
Dr. Samore: The United States first detected suspicious nuclear activities around 1983 in the Reagan administration when we saw a very small research reactor being built at the Yongbyon Nuclear Facility, and I actually entered the government in 1984 and I remember, at the time, there was a heated debate among the intelligence analysts whether this little research reactor was going to be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons or whether it was part of an indigenous research program. So we didn’t really know early on what the North Koreans were up to, and there was a lot of speculation about motivation and I think it’s really the same uncertainty we have now. Is this primarily a defensive program, which is intended to deter more powerful enemies, including the United States and now South Korea and China? Or is there somehow an intent to use nuclear weapons in order to offensively try to reunify the Korean peninsula by force?
I would say that since the 1980s, when we first detected evidence that North Korea was pursuing nuclear weapons, the power trends have all gone very decisively against North Korea. So even back in the 80s, North Korea’s military capacity, conventional military capacity was still pretty respectable. 30 years on it’s really gone into a ditch, I mean in terms of their poverty being translated into very serious limits on their ability to acquire new nuclear weapons, I mean new conventional weapons, to exercise, to even feed their soldiers. So to the extent that Kim Il-sung’s original motivation may have included some offensive intent, I think now most analysts, myself included, think it’s primarily a deterrent because the balance of power has shifted so decisively against North Korea vis a vis South Korea and the United States since the program originally started.
Matt: Kim Jong-il came into power after his father, Kim Il-sung died, how did that change the dynamic around the nuclear program?
Dr. Samore: Well we had already started the negotiations for what eventually ended up being the first nuclear deal, the 1994 Agreed Framework. We started that when Kim Il-sung was still alive, and just so you know, the origin of that crisis. After the United States discovered that North Korea was building an undeclared nuclear facility, we worked with the Soviet Union to put pressure on North Korea to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty and then finally make a full declaration to the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, of what their nuclear facilities were. Finally in 1992, ironically after the civil union collapsed, North Korea did join the NPT and made a declaration to the IAEA, but it was widely seen as false. We had pretty good evidence that they undeclared the amount of plutonium they had produced before that declaration, and they were confronted with a challenge inspection, by the IAEA to visit a particular facility at Yongbyon, where we thought there was waste evidence of a prior reprocessing to recover plutonium. We thought they might have enough plutonium for one or two bombs at that time, but we weren’t really sure. Anyway, North Korea rejected that demand for inspection and they said we’re withdrawing from the NPT, and that led to the first US DPRK negotiations for a nuclear deal. Started with Kim Il-sung when he was alive and then he died in the middle of the negotiations and then his father took over and the negotiations were finished in June of 1994.
Matt: In that 1994 agreement, in exchange for the United States providing a half million tonnes of oil, as well as two light water nuclear reactors, North Korea would shut down its heavy water plants. That deal fizzled out by 2002. Why didn’t it work?
Dr. Samore: So the primary reason why the 1994 Agreed Framework collapsed is because North Korea cheated on it. As you said, the agreement required North Korea to freeze their heavy water produced facilities, including the little five megawatt reactor that had been operating since the mid-1980s, as well as a much larger reactor that was under construction, in fact two, there was a 50 and a 200 megawatt reactor that were under construction and then, according to the longterm plan of the 1994 Agreed Framework, they would have to demolish those facilities at a certain point and the construction of the replacement light water reactors. Toward the end of the Clinton administration, right at the very last year, we saw some evidence that North Korea might be pursuing a clandestine enrichment program based on technology from Pakistan, and then one the first year or two of the Bush administration, which came to office quite hostile to the Agreed Framework, there was very conclusive evidence that North Korea was pursuing a secret enrichment program, which would have circumvented the purpose of the agreed framework by giving them an alternative route to produce nuclear material for nuclear weapons.
So the Bush administration confronted North Korea with the charge that they were cheating and I don’t think the diplomacy from Washington was very subtle and effective, but it lead to the deterioration and eventually the collapse of the agreement and it wasn’t until 2005, so years later that the US, after the six party talk started, the US was able to construct under President Bush’s second term a new nuclear deal with North Korea, which once again, had them promise to give up all their nuclear weapons in the context of establishing peace on the Korean peninsula, normalizing relations between the US and North Korea and so forth.
Matt: The thinking has long been that the development of a nuclear program is a negotiation tool to extract concessions from more developed nations. Why is this time different?
Dr. Samore: Well I haven’t seen anything different. I mean my experience with the North Koreans is that the negotiations usually start by talking about security issues, ’cause the North Korean argument is we have to have nuclear weapons to defend ourselves. So the discussion normally begins with the question of assurances and guarantees in peace treaty, but in the course of negotiations, the North Koreans normally demand concrete benefits for limiting and eventually giving up their nuclear weapons program, and those benefits take the form of rice, or cash, or heavy fuel oil, or fertilizer, or nuclear power plants, and I’m guessing that this time around it will be pretty similar. That the initial North Korean demand or they put the negotiation in the context of security assurances for denuclearize, but I’ve always found that what they’re much more interested in is material benefit in the form of economic assistance and cooperation.
But we’re at the early stages of the third round of negotiations with the North Koreans, so I think it’ll be a while before they fully reveal what the quid quo pro is.
Matt: This all feels like it’s developed very quickly. We were talking about North Korea’s ability to hit Guam with a nuclear strike just a few months ago, all of a sudden we’re talking about a face-to-face meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Trump. What’s going on here?
Dr. Samore: I think part of this is that President Trump has a very unconventional approach to diplomacy. I mean, in the past the North Korean’s have tried to arrange meetings with presidents ’cause they see that as a way to help legitimize their position, give them stature, and we’ve always said no, that we wouldn’t have a meeting with the president, sitting president, unless we had a big agreement to announce, which of course requires months and months of negotiations beforehand. President Trump has turned that logic on it’s head, and he’s going to have a big showy summit at the head end and then that will be followed by a very complicated and protracted negotiation to establish a process for actually achieving concrete results. But the other thing that’s going on, I think, is that Kim Jong Un has really been playing his cards very carefully. He’s had two years of a very aggressive testing campaign started in 2016 when President Obama was in power. So he’s had a very aggressive nuclear testing campaign which resulted in a thermonuclear weapon last September and he’s had a very aggressive testing campaign for long range missiles, which ended last November in the test of a rocket that at least had the legs of an ICBM. Whether it’s reliable or accurate, we don’t know.
So he’s reached the point of technical achievement, where he can take a pause in testing. In particular because of the cost of those last two years of aggressive testing has been a very, very rigorous sanctions regime. I mean, and mainly because the Chinese have responded so negatively to this aggressive testing, they’ve been willing, starting with Obama, and then following up with Trump, Chinese had been willing to support broad economic sanctions against North Korea’s economy, which is having somewhat of an effect. It’s a very difficult country to sanction, but at least there’s some evidence that it’s beginning to have any effect. So I think Kim Jong Un is motivated by a desire to try to get relief from those sanctions.
Matt: You’ve been across the table during these negotiations. Do you think Donald Trump’s unorthodox, “Art of the Deal” negotiating style will resonate in that setting?
Dr. Samore: Well I think the North Koreans are very comfortable with the idea of making a big announcement of a political framework and then when you get down into the details, dragging that out, or driving a very hard bargain, or trying to take very small steps in exchange for very large rewards. So I think the North Koreans will be very comfortable with this kind of an approach. I mean the September 2005 six party statement was very similar to what I imagine will come out of the Trump-Kim summit meeting, which’ll be a very broad statement of intent to denuclearize, maybe with some deadlines for achieving an agreement and then followed by an effort to try to actually put flesh on those bones and some specific actions that the North Koreans would take.
Now we’re going into these talks, according to John Bolton, by demanding that North Korea give up all of its nuclear weapons in a short period of time, to our satisfaction, and then we will reward them with economic and political measures. I think that’s a good opening bargaining position. I’ll be very surprised if it’s successful, but it’s not a bad way to start, and then we’ll find out the Trump administration if it doesn’t work, the Trump administration will have to make a decision at that point, whether they wanna declare the diplomacy has failed, and try to go back to pressure and threats of bloody nose or whether they look for compromises that would involve incremental measures to slow down or limit the program in exchange for some limited measures on our part, but I think we’re months away from that. From having to face that choice.
Matt: The North Koreans have explicitly put complete denuclearization on the table. They’re open to talking about it. You’ve expressed some skepticism that that could happen, why not?
Dr. Samore: Well I think they see nuclear weapons as essential to they countries survival, security, and status, and of course they worked at it for well over 30 years. So this is a major part of North Korea’s survival campaign or survival strategy, and I just find it very hard to believe that they would give it up. I think they might except limits on it. So for example, I think an early test will be whether they make a declaration of their undeclared nuclear facilities, put them on the table for a freeze, and if we could get an end for their production of nuclear weapons, I think that would be an important achievement, or if we could get limits on missile production, that would be an important step toward total elimination, but a near term measure to constrain the program.
The big question will be verification. I mean that’s always been the Achilles’s heel of these agreements because the North Korean’s have never been willing to accept an extensive intrusive verifications system comparable to for example, what Iran has agreed to in the JCP0A (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.) Otherwise known as the nuclear deal.
So to me that’s what I’ll be watching to see whether anything is different this time. For example, the North Koreans deny having any nuclear facilities outside of the Yongbyon Nuclear Center, which has been under IAEA inspection off and on for many decades, and we know that’s not true. We know that they have undeclared facilities outside of Yongbyon. Until the North Koreans declare that, any talk of a freeze is just not serious.
Matt: Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear and chemical weapons program in 2003. Didn’t work out so well for him. Now we’re talking about potentially pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Can North Korea consider the United States a trustworthy adversary in the negotiations?
Dr. Samore: I don’t think the North Koreans trust anybody. They don’t trust the Chinese, they don’t trust the Americans, they don’t trust the Russians, they hate the Japanese, and right now they’re being friendly with the South Koreans, but in some ways South Korea represents the greatest threat because the more exposure and openness there is between North and South Korea, the more North Korean citizens must wonder why they’re living in such a horrible country under such a terrible government compared to their southern brothers.
So I think for North Korea, nuclear weapons is protection against all of their enemies, and I’m not sure whether the US can say or do anything that would really give the North Koreans any confidence sort of them having their own nuclear weapons, which is the best guarantee of survival they can think of.
Matt: Shortly after President Trump agreed to the face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong Un, you expressed some concern about whether the U.S. had the personnel in place to negotiate effectively. A couple months later, do you feel like the United States is better prepared to handle these negotiations?
Dr. Samore: The only thing that’s improved is the replacement of Secretary of State Tillerson with Pompeo, ’cause I think Pompeo has the president’s confidence. I think Pompeo will try to rebuild the State Department into effective instrument of diplomacy, but beyond that change at the top level, there’s really been no improvement. So one thing coming out of the Trump-Kim summit will have to be the establishment of a strong negotiating team, which means putting somebody in charge. I don’t think Pompeo can do it, so they’ll have to be a special negotiator selected to lead an inter-agency team, and it’s very important that you have a team dedicated to this negotiation with representatives from the State Department, Intelligence Community, Pentagon, Department of Energy and so forth. It’s a full time job. I mean when we negotiated the Agreed Framework, it took 18 months. The negotiation of the September 2005 agreement took a number of months, so you really have to have a very strong effort, and I think that’ll happen ’cause it’s the only way you can possibly negotiate short of North Korea just handing over it’s nuclear weapons, which I think is unlikely.
Matt: What’s the best we can hope for coming out of the discussions?
Dr. Samore: So I think the minimum is that North Korea agrees to keep their moratorium on nuclear and missile testing in place during the course of the negotiations. So that way we benefit from the negotiations, even if they drag out. As long as there’s a test freeze in place, it limits North Korea’s ability to further perfect it’s capabilities, especially its long range missile capabilities. Where I think there’s more uncertainty about whether they really have a workable ICBM, and without full testing, there will be question marks about exactly what their status is. So I think that’s a minimum, bare minimum is to keep the test freeze in place for years if necessary, and then try to come up with additional steps that would limit North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, whether it’s a freeze on further production of nuclear weapons, or long range missiles, maybe some partial dismantlement of the current arsenal or production facilities. One can think of a big range of things we would like to see to limit the program and the Trump administration, if they decide to go down that route of incremental reciprocal steps, they’ll have to figure out what they’re prepared to give North Korea in return by way of partial sanctions relief, by way of allowing China and South Korea to provide economic assistance in cooperation, and whatever security assurances or guarantees we’re prepared to do.
Matt: Israeli Prime minister Netanyahu recently gave a presentation alleging that Iran has been cheating on the nuclear agreement. What’s going to happen with that? And how could it affect the situation on the Korean peninsula?
Dr. Samore: So as you say, we don’t know what President Trump will decide to do on May 12 when he’s required to extend US sanctions relief under the nuclear deal for another 120 days. The Europeans are pressing Trump very hard to come to an agreement with them to work on various areas of Iran’s behavior, but keep the nuclear deal in place. Prime minister Netanyahu and certainly the Saudis and others are pushing in the other direction to convince President Trump to walkaway from the agreement. I think it would be incredibly stupid for the US to leave the agreement because it’s working for now. I mean eventually it’s going to run out and we will face a problem with Iran potentially continuing or Iran resuming it’s efforts to require nuclear weapons, which there’s no doubt that’s what they were seeking to do, before we intervene. But to walk away from the deal now and lead to a rift with the Europeans will weaken our ability to work with the Europeans on dealing with other elements of Iran’s behavior.
So I don’t know what Trump will do. I think that the new documents that the Prime Minister Netanyahu announced today, of course nobody’s looked at them, but we already have a lot of documents from Iran’s nuclear weapons program, so there’s no doubt that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons before they suspended that effort in 2003, or that some dual use activities continued after 2003. I think that’s all very clear. It sounds to me like this new information has additional texture and detail and may very well influence President Trump’s decision about what to do on May 12th.
