You know, I get fed up with this sort of crap. Little macho boys,
strutting their stuff on the school yard. The crisis we face is that
these are the sort of people who slime their way to the top of the
Pyramid, and even if we kick them off the top, they are just ahead of
a crowd of lookalikes.
Our need to look to strongmen leaders comes from a long history
influenced by, among other things, our many religions. We are
conditioned to look outward, rather than to look within for strength.
This misdirection is everywhere. We worship our strong military
leaders, our strong industrialists, our big mouthed politicians and
even our tough guy criminals.
I tell you, if we don't want to use our brains, then let's give them
to some animal that will.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/4/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
PATRICK LAWRENCE: It Was Kim That Walked Away
March 4, 2019
There are two sides to the story about why the second North Korea peace
summit fell apart last week, writes Patrick Lawrence.
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
The abrupt and unexpected failure of the second Trump–Kim summit last week
raises many questions. Let’s get one out of the way before addressing the
others: No, the collapse of talks between President Donald Trump and Kim
Jong-un, the North Korean leader, does not scuttle the most promising
chance
for peace on the Korean Peninsula since the 1953 signing of the armistice
ending the Korean War. There is more to come. This was plain within hours
of
the summit’s end.
At this point it’s still difficult to discern even what transpired between
the two leaders. The U.S. and North Korean accounts of the proceedings in
Hanoi are widely at variance on key points. With history in view, it is
very
likely that the North Korean version comes closer to the truth than what
the
Trump administration is putting out and what the U.S. press is dutifully
reporting.
Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo holds news conference after
summit JW Marriott Hotel, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (Official White House
Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hold news conference after
summit on Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (White House Photo by Joyce N.
Boghosian)
By Trump’s account, Kim agreed to dismantle his most important nuclear
production facility, at Yongbyon, roughly 60 miles north of Pyongyang. In
exchange, Kim asked for all sanctions now in force against North Korea—some
passed at the UN, others imposed by Washington alone—to be lifted.
Here is Trump talking to correspondents after the bust-up Thursday morning:
“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we
couldn’t do that. They were willing to de-nuke a large portion of the areas
that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all the sanctions for that…. They
wanted sanctions lifted but they weren’t willing to do an area we wanted.”
The “large portion” Trump mentioned is Yongbyon: There is no dispute about
this. Pyongyang has shut down the reactor at Yongbyon twice in the past, in
1994 and in 2007. In 2008 Kim Jong-il, the reigning Kim’s father, ordered
the cooling tower at Yongbyon demolished—a televised event many readers
will
remember. The site was reactivated in succeeding years following a series
of
multi-sided talks that went nowhere.
Kangson Facility
The “area we wanted” appears to refer to an alleged nuclear facility at
Kangson, also near the North Korean capital. What the North actually does
at
Kangson has never been verified, but it was one of a number of sites the
U.S. side also insisted Pyongyang close.
Translation of the U.S. version of events in Hanoi: Kim offered us only one
item on our list while demanding we give him everything he wanted. Who
could
possibly agree to such a deal?
North Korean officials tell a different story. After Trump offered his
post-summit description of events, the North’s foreign minister, Ri
Yong-ho,
gave his own press conference; a rarity among North Korean officials. Kim
had agreed to shutter the North’s main nuclear facility, by Ri’s account,
if
the U.S. consented to lift only the five sets of sanctions imposed by the
U.N. Security Council in 2016 and 2017.
Unlike restrictions on weapons and nuclear-related equipment, these covered
entire export sectors, including minerals, metals, coal, agriculture and
seafood. These, Ri said, were the measures that directly hurt the lives and
livelihoods of ordinary North Koreans. Layer upon layer of other sanctions
would remain in effect.
What’s Wrong?
Translation of the North Korean position in Hanoi: We will take a
considerable step toward denuclearization providing you take one of
corresponding magnitude. Now the question changes: What exactly is wrong
with such a deal?
You have to go back to Trump’s early months in office to understand what
appears to have transpired in Hanoi. The administration’s initial position
was simple but ridiculous: The North had to completely disarm before
Washington would even begin talks.
Trump leaving second summit with Kim Jong Un, Feb. 28, 2019, at Noi Bai
International Airport in Hanoi. (White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Trump leaving second summit with Kim Jong Un, Feb. 28, 2019, at Noi Bai
International Airport in Hanoi. (White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Only when the absurdity of this maximalist demand became too obvious to
sustain—”give us everything we will negotiate before we negotiate”—did the
Trump administration alter its demands, if reluctantly and slightly.
Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, countered this as soon as Trump
agreed
last year to meet Kim, as they did in Singapore last June. The way ahead
was
“action for action,” in Moon’s phrase. Pyongyang’s term for the same thing
is “corresponding measures.” Elsewhere the concept is called “sequencing.”
Whatever one calls it, a gradual, step-by-step process is the only logical
way forward after nearly seven decades of mutual distrust.
Trump’s Refusal
In effect, Kim proposed a sequenced approach when he met Trump last week.
And in effect, Trump refused it. It is no wonder John Bolton, Trump’s
national security adviser and the administration’s hyper-hawk on North
Korea, has been assuring like-minded colleagues not to fret about the
Trump-Kim summits because they are guaranteed to fail.
“This kind of opportunity may never come again,” Ri, the North’s foreign
minister, said at his late-night press conference. This is not where the
odds lie.
First, Moon Jae-in pledged to help mediate between the North and the U.S.
as
soon as the Hanoi summit collapsed. And it has been clear since Moon was
elected South Korea’s president in May 2017 that control of the agenda on
the Korean Peninsula has gradually passed from the U.S. to Seoul and those
working with it, notably China and Russia.
Second, Moon enjoys a trustful rapport with Kim. And the latter is
unquestionably serious about shifting the North’s priorities from nuclear
capability to economic development. Kim wants a deal, in short.
The primary danger to future advances toward a lasting settlement in
Northeast Asia lies in Washington. It has been the spoiler on the Korean
question before, let us not forget. In the early 2000s, the U.S. never
delivered two light-water reactors it had promised the North in exchange
for
its cessation of its nuclear program. After Yongbyon was shuttered in 2007,
the U.S. failed to supply promised shipments of heating fuel, citing “an
understanding between the parties” about which neither China nor Russia,
who
were also signatories to the agreement, had ever heard.
This time around, there is little question that Bolton and other hawks in
the Trump administration intend to block progress as long as they can. They
have just succeeded in scuttling Moon’s long-gestating plans to develop a
series of cross-border economic projects. The South Korean leader had hoped
that a planned communiqué to be issued at the summit’s end in Hanoi would
have opened the way for these ventures to proceed. Trump and Kim never
signed it.
“We had to walk away,” Trump said at his press conference in the
Vietnamese
capital. It is more likely that Kim is the one who walked away first.
“It occurs to us that there may not be a need to continue,” Choe Son-hui,
Kim’s vice-foreign minister, said later. “We’re doing a lot of thinking.”
It
is difficult to blame Pyongyang for this, given the outcome in Hanoi.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the
International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and
lecturer. His most recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the
American Century” (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is
www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist.
