Battlegrounds
Page 39
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THE TRILATERAL meeting had three main purposes: first, to foster a common understanding of the precise nature of North Korea’s nuclear threat; second, to agree on principles we deemed essential to ensuring that the Kim regime no longer posed a grave danger to our security; and third, to identify mutually reinforcing actions our leaders and our governments could take to advance our collective efforts.
It was important that Chung, Yachi, and I agree on the North Korean regime’s motivations and intentions, because differences of opinion over the best approach to North Korea stemmed from divergent understandings of why Kim Jong-un wants nuclear weapons and advanced missiles. For example, those who argued that the least risky and least costly course of action would be to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and then deter its use of nuclear weapons assumed Pyongyang wanted the most destructive weapons on earth mainly for defensive purposes. As David Lai and Alyssa Blair wrote in August 2017, “facing continued hostility from the United States and its allies, Japan and South Korea, North Korea felt extreme concern about its national survival; as a result, it viewed nuclear weapons as a necessity.”9 Lai, professor at the U.S. Army War College, asserted that “in practice a North Korean nuclear capability to attack America would not threaten U.S. security” because “the North is looking for a deterrent to U.S. military action.” I disagree. The assumption that Kim wants nuclear weapons only for deterrence is based on mirror imaging of an adversary that is not “like us” and on simplistic historical analogies to nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Chung, Yachi, and I agreed that we had to base our approach on the possibility that Kim’s family dictatorship wanted these weapons for more than defensive purposes.
Chairman Kim is the third in a succession of ultranationalist leaders whose legitimacy rests on the promise of “final victory.”10 It was important to at least consider the Kim regime’s own explanation for investing and sacrificing so much in pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles. Kim Jong-un and his father both spoke of their planned nuclear arsenal as a “treasured sword” designed to cleave the alliance between the United States and South Korea and make the United States think twice about ever coming to South Korea’s aid in time of war. Because the United States would likely determine that the security of South Korea was not worth a nuclear holocaust on its own territory, nuclear weapons would help push U.S. forces off the peninsula as the first step toward “red-colored unification” (적화통일), or “final victory,” after which South Korea would submit to Kim family rule.11 After he assumed power, Kim Jong-un reportedly directed the military to come up with a new war plan so that the Korean People’s Army could occupy Seoul in three days and the peninsula in seven. The North Korean missile launches in 2016 and 2017 were meant to exercise the war plan, which included practicing nuclear airbursts over disembarkation airfields and ports in South Korea and U.S. bases in Japan.12
Moreover, if North Korea was concerned mainly with deterring South Korea and the United States, it did not need nukes. North Korea has a tremendous conventional deterrent capability with more than 21,000 artillery and rocket systems able to bombard the city of Seoul, which lies only thirty-one miles from the DMZ.13 And what was North Korea so eager to deter? Every act of aggression and violence against the United States, South Korea, and Japan since the invasion of South Korea in June 1950 was initiated by the North. North Korea directly attacked the South Korean leadership during the 1968 commando attacks of the Blue House and the failed assassination of President Chun Doo-hwan in Rangoon, Burma, in 1983, to set conditions for the ultimate objective of red-colored unification. And the North has not hesitated to employ terrorism against the innocent. In 1987, less than a year before the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, two North Korean agents exploded Korean Air Flight 858, killing 113 South Korean civilians. One agent, who survived a suicide attempt, confessed later that the attack had been ordered by Kim Jong-il. North Korea has also abducted thousands of South Koreans and as many as a hundred Japanese citizens since the armistice.14 Testimonies from North Korean defectors suggest varying motivations, ranging from finding native language teachers for its spies to a long-term breeding project that sought to train the abductees’ children as secret agents.15
Rather than deter conflict, North Korea would likely become more aggressive and prone to initiate a war once the Kim regime had its desired weapons. Under the cover of nuclear capabilities, Kim Jong-un could increase physical attacks on South Korea and cyber attacks globally.16 Pyongyang would almost certainly try to extort payoffs and concessions from South Korea, Japan, the United States, and others.17 And if North Korea develops an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the United States, it is easy to imagine Pyongyang issuing an ultimatum to Washington demanding that U.S. forces depart the peninsula. But even if Kim Jong-un really did want nuclear weapons for the less ambitious purpose of forestalling efforts to end Kim family rule, there are other reasons a nuclear-armed North Korea is a grave danger for which deterrence is an inadequate solution.
As with Iran and the Middle East, accepting and deterring a nuclear-armed North Korea would create strong incentives for the further proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region. If North Korea was capable of striking the United States with a nuclear weapon, thus raising further doubts about the willingness of the United States to keep South Korea and Japan under the protection of its “nuclear umbrella,” it could be only a matter of time before Japan and South Korea concluded they needed their own nuclear weapons. And soon enough, other countries across Asia and beyond might conclude they needed them, too.
Another factor is the North Korean regime’s record of selling every weapon it has ever possessed, including its nuclear and missile technologies. At the end of 2006, Israel Defense Forces intelligence chief, Gen. Amos Yadlin, concluded that a cube-shaped structure in the Syrian desert was a nuclear reactor intended to produce plutonium for military purposes.18 A few months later, Mossad (Israeli intelligence) agents broke into the Vienna hotel room of Ibrahim Othman, the head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission. The images they downloaded from his computer included photos of North Korean scientists and workers at the site. At 10:30 p.m. on September 5, 2007, Israel launched Operation Outside the Box as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fighter jets streaked across the Syrian desert only one hundred meters above ground level. The fighters dropped seventeen tons of explosives on the facility, destroying it completely. Israel did not admit to the attack until 2018. And Syria, perhaps reluctant to divulge both the impotence of its defenses and the nature of its nuclear weapons programs, acknowledged only an intrusion of its airspace. Ten North Korean scientists are believed to have perished in the strike.19
North Korea has smuggled weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen, militias in Libya, and armed forces in Sudan, all in violation of UN sanctions. The DPRK not only sold its nuclear program to Syria, but also assisted it with the production of chemical weapons used to mass murder civilians during the Syrian Civil War.20 North Korea has also shared its missile and nuclear technology with Iran. In return, Iran financed the Al-Kibar nuclear reactor in Syria and brokered a range of North Korean arms sales to Bashar al-Assad.21 Shifting its criminal and weapons-smuggling networks to the marketing and sale of nuclear weapons and facilities would be a simple task for Pyongyang. It is not unreasonable to envision North Korea selling nuclear devices to the highest bidder, even if that bidder is a terrorist organization. As with Iran, decisions concerning North Korea’s nuclear program should not be separated from the nature of its depraved leadership. Yachi, Chung, and I agreed that the stakes were high for our security and the security of all nations.
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WE DEVELOPED three first principles. First, we would convince other nations to support the strategy of maximum pressure and resist the temptation to accede to weak initial agreements just to get to the negotiating table. In the past, weak deals, such as “freeze for freeze,” in which the United Sta
tes and South Korea suspended military exercises in return for flimsy North Korean promises to suspend testing of nuclear weapons and missiles, gave North Korea what it wanted, alleviating sanctions and delivering payoffs that reduced pressure on the regime. These kinds of agreements should be nonstarters.22
Second, we could not view diplomacy and the development of military options as separate, sequential efforts. Successful diplomacy would depend on demonstrated will and capability to employ force against North Korea if necessary. Consistent with negotiation and mediation theory taught in business schools, we must make Pyongyang’s “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” or BATNA, look bleak while making denuclearization look attractive based on economic benefits and assurances that the Kim regime would remain intact.
Third and most important, we would resist efforts to lift sanctions prematurely or to reward the DPRK government just for talking. Sanctions on the regime would remain in place until there was irreversible momentum toward denuclearization. I believe that adhering to those principles gave us the best chance to convince Kim that his family’s decades-old playbook no longer worked; he could no longer keep his nuclear weapons and missile programs going while extorting concessions. But events since our previous meeting in August 2017 were already testing our ability to maintain this nascent strategy.
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IN LATE 2017, after the September nuclear test by North Korea, the effort to apply maximum pressure was beginning to take effect. The UN Security Council had approved unprecedented sanctions. American, South Korean, and Japanese armed forces trained and prepared for contingencies. Chairman Kim was isolated. In December, the United States and Canada announced that they would host nations from around the world in Vancouver in January to show solidarity against North Korea’s nuclear program. The Trump administration sanctioned more North Korean entities in eighteen months than the Obama administration did in eight years. Kim must have decided that it was time to make an overture and alleviate the pressure. His first move was to respond to President Moon’s invitation for an opening to the North.
On January 9, 2018, when North Korean officials met with South Korean officials at the DMZ for the first time since 2015, they announced that they would accept President Moon’s invitation to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. During the games in the following months, fawning coverage of the North Korean athletes, its cheerleaders, the joint North Korea–South Korea women’s hockey team, and especially the lead of the North Korean delegation, Kim Jong-un’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong, seemed to give Kim what he wanted. South Korea seated the U.S. delegation, Vice President and Mrs. Pence and First Daughter Ivanka Trump, directly in front of the North Korean delegation, which included Kim Yong-nam, the nearly ninety-year-old nominal head of state.23 President Moon no doubt hoped that the two delegations might break the ice and engage in conversation, but neither party spoke to the other. The good feelings that the Olympics generated, however, boosted support for a more conciliatory approach to Pyongyang, especially in Seoul. Old hopes were rekindled. Maybe participation in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was the start of Pyongyang’s transformation into something like the government in Hanoi.24
Moon, eager to pursue inter-Korean dialogue and reduce tensions on the peninsula, followed up the Olympics with a meeting with Kim at the demilitarized zone on April 27, 2018. The two leaders held hands as they dramatically stepped across the line dividing the DMZ and then held a conversation at the “Truce Village,” Panmunjom. The ill winds on the Korean Peninsula seemed to be receding.
After the Moon-Kim meeting, Chung and South Korea’s intelligence chief, Suh Hoon, traveled to the United States to brief me and Gina Haspel, acting director of the CIA, on the results of the meeting. I arranged for them to also brief members of the president’s cabinet in advance of an Oval Office meeting with President Trump. The main purpose of their trip was to communicate Kim Jong-un’s willingness to meet with President Trump, convey President Moon’s request that President Trump reciprocate, and to inform us of President Moon’s plans for sustained engagement with the North.
I was skeptical of a Trump-Kim summit because it was likely to alleviate diplomatic and economic pressure on Kim. Other nations, especially China and Russia, would probably become slack on sanctions enforcement. Moreover, the maximum pressure strategy was still in its nascent stages; some of the sanctions would not take full effect until the end of 2019. I believed that this was why Kim Jong-un had agreed to participate in the Olympics, met with Moon, and reacted positively to Moon’s proposal of a meeting with Trump. Kim needed a way to alleviate pressure, bolster his reputation, and break out of his isolation. Plus, engaging Seoul and Washington would make him more attractive to other world leaders. Chairman Xi, for example, would no doubt fear missing out on Pyongyang’s dialogue with us and the South Koreans, a dialogue that could produce an outcome inconsistent with China’s interests.
But I also knew that President Trump would say yes to a summit. He would find a historic first meeting between a North Korean leader and a U.S. president irresistible. His confidence in using relationships to solve problems, and in his own negotiating skills, would render ineffective any argument to wait until Pyongyang began to feel the effects of the maximum pressure campaign. Given the certainty of that outcome, our team worked with the State Department and others across the government to make the most out of a forthcoming summit while keeping the pressure campaign intact.
Despite my misgivings, I also believed that a summit with Kim would present an opportunity. Trump was unconventional, and the North Korea challenge had proven immutable to conventional approaches. A summit would drive a process that was more top down than bottom up, and that seemed positive. Bottom-up, protracted negotiations with North Korean officials who had no real decision-making authority and who were fully vested in the status quo, had in the past proven frustrating and futile. Although we knew that Kim Jong-un had a tremendous capacity for brutality, we did not know how he would respond to President Trump’s argument that denuclearization was in Kim’s interest. His background was different from that of his father and grandfather. He was quirky to say the least. He took his father’s interest in the National Basketball Association and, in particular, the famous Chicago Bulls championship teams of the 1990s to the extreme. Kim’s odd alliance with that team’s eccentric, much-pierced, and excessively tattooed defensive specialist Dennis Rodman (who had also appeared on Trump’s reality TV show, The Apprentice) revealed his tendency toward immoderation and maybe also toward making unexpected decisions.25 Moreover, in his first five years as “Great Successor,” Kim had created an unprecedented class of wealthy entrepreneurs, military officers, and party officials known as donju (돈주), loosely translated as “masters of money,” whose extensive access to smuggled goods and foreign currency helped the economy remain stable as sanctions tightened.26 Kim may prove reluctant to dash the rising expectations of the donju. Allison Hooker, who had traveled to North Korea several times and understood the country as well as anyone in the U.S. government, agreed that there was at least a slim chance of a breakthrough.
Our meeting with Yachi and Chung focused on how to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the inter-Korean dialogue and the Trump-Kim Summit while minimizing risks and adhering to our principles. Keeping Korea, Japan, and the United States aligned would communicate resolve to North Korea and the world. After listening to Chung and Yachi, I summarized their comments around three points of agreement. First, while improvements in inter-Korean relations should reduce tensions, we remained committed to keeping sanctions in place until there was irreversible and verifiable progress toward denuclearization. Second, we would emphasize to Kim and others that obligations under UN Security Council resolutions were for North Korean action, not for U.S. or South Korean concessions. In particular, we should reject talk of a freeze for freeze or other preliminary agreements that would fail to address the problem and reduce pre
ssure on the North. Finally, we would ask all nations, including China and Russia, to encourage Kim to take advantage of the opportunity for enduring peace and prosperity. I still had profound reservations about the summit, but Kim was enjoying the temporary alignment of an unconventional U.S. president willing to take risks and a South Korean president willing to pursue a fundamentally different relationship between North and South.
I departed the White House the following month, on April 9, 2018. My regrets at leaving the job as national security advisor were threefold, and all reflected in that earlier meeting in San Francisco. I would miss working with dedicated foreign counterparts such as Yachi and Chung. I would also miss my colleagues on the NSC staff, including Matt Pottinger, Allison Hooker, and Eric Johnson. And I would regret leaving unfinished our work on crucial challenges to our freedom and security. But I also realized that the toxic environment in Washington, in the administration, and the White House had hobbled my ability to make a positive contribution to the president and our nation.