By Robin Wright
After a week of escalating rhetorical confrontations, President Trump cancelled his summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, scheduled for June 12th, in Singapore. “I was very much looking forward to being there with you,” he wrote, in a letter to Kim released by the White House on Thursday. “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”Trump also issued a startling threat about the danger of a military confrontation—and even nuclear war. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used,” he wrote. The President did not, however, close off the possibility of future diplomacy. A “wonderful dialogue” had been “building up,” he wrote. “Someday, I look very much forward to meeting you.” In a somewhat bizarre line, Trump suggested that Kim “call me or write” if he changes his mind. The cancellation of the summit is to the “detriment of the world,” the President wrote. He added that North Korea—which initiated new outreach to both South Korea and the United States on January 1st—is losing the opportunity for “great prosperity and wealth.” But Trump thanked Kim for releasing three American citizens who had been imprisoned in Pyongyang.
The cancellation—at least for now—is a huge setback for Trump’s most ambitious foreign-policy goal, which could define his legacy. But the Administration’s hasty and sometimes impulsive diplomacy has been troubled from the start. “It’s amazing that it got to this point,” Frank Aum, a former Defense Department expert on North Korea who is now at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told me. “The summit was botched because of a bad game of telephone. On the one hand, it could be that both sides had sincere intentions, but because of poor communication and insensitivities it fell apart. The other interpretation is that both sides wanted it to fail and they’re trying to set each other up as being at fault.”
The abrupt collapse of diplomacy comes just three days after the White House released a shiny commemorative coin as a memento of the historic first summit between the leaders. Profiles of President Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un—men whose countries are still technically at war—face each other. “Peace Talks” was inscribed across the top, in English and Korean. Less than twenty-four hours later, the release looked awkwardly premature.
Trump’s dramatic move followed North Korea’s demolition of its nuclear test site at Punggye-Ri, with a handful of American and foreign journalists witnessing the explosions. Intended as a sign of good faith, Kim had promised to blow up three underground tunnels and various buildings at remote Mount Mantapsan. Foreign media reported that the explosions triggered nearby landslides near the tunnels and large clouds of smoke. North Korea’s state-controlled news agency said, “The dismantling of the nuclear test ground conducted with high-level transparency has clearly attested once again to the proactive and peace-loving efforts of the DPRK government being made for assuring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and over the world.” But foreign weapons experts—some of whom have suggested that the demotion of the mountain site is reversible—were not invited to attend.
Trump is learning the same lesson faced by twelve of his Oval Office predecessors, dating back to Harry Truman, over seven decades: dealing with North Korea—and three generations of the mercurial Kim dynasty—is the toughest diplomatic challenge in the world. Since the 1953 truce in the Korean War, long and tortuous negotiations—on any issue—have not produced a single enduring agreement. North Korea has consistently been better at the nuanced gamesmanship of diplomacy. Meanwhile, the Pyongyang regime has survived, albeit at a staggering price in terms of isolation and poverty, and with the starvation of millions of its people.
Trump’s cancellation follows three weeks of war-of-words rhetoric that typified the President’s first year of office, and which have increasingly endangered diplomacy this year. Three developments seem to have slowed the momentum. The first was a statement by the new national-security adviser, John Bolton, on April 29th, that the U.S.’s goal in North Korea was the “Libya model.” In 2003, the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, promised to surrender his nascent nuclear program and weapons of mass destruction. In return, the George W. Bush Administration promised that the North African nation would “regain a secure and respected place” in the world. Eight years later, however, a popular uprising spawned by the Arab Spring and backed militarily by the United States and nato warplanes ended Qaddafi’s forty-year rule. He was murdered ignominiously, by a mob.
Bolton’s intent may have been to describe the way disarmament occurred in Libya, which involved American and British inspectors receiving access to all of the country’s nuclear sites. But the message clearly alarmed North Korea, which had initiated the diplomatic outreach before Bolton was on the job. Pyongyang reacted with scathing condemnation. “We do not hide our feeling of repugnance toward him,” the First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, said. He called Bolton’s remarks “reckless” and “unbridled.”
North Korea has publicly disdained Bolton since 2003, when he was the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control. At the time, Bolton gave a speech, in South Korea, personally attacking Kim Jong Il—the current leader’s father—and calling his rule a “hellish nightmare.” North Korea’s state-controlled media countered by calling Bolton “human scum and a bloodsucker.” “We know that there are several hawks within the present U.S. administration but have not yet found out such rude human scum as Bolton,” one newspaper article, in English, said. “What he uttered is no more than rubbish which can be let loose only by a beastly man bereft of reason.”
North Korea refused to deal with Bolton that year, when Washington was trying to reënergize the so-called Six-Party Talks—with the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States—the last major attempt at nuclear diplomacy. Bolton later wrote that North Korea’s description of him as “human scum” was “the highest accolade I received during all my service in the Bush years.”
Fifteen years after that original dustup, Bolton’s comment on the Libya model has revived the personal animosity. Trump tried to downplay the remark, but his Administration continues to send mixed messages. On Monday, Vice-President Mike Pence again invoked the Libya model—as a threat. “There was some talk about the Libyan model last week, and, you know, as the President made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong Un doesn’t make a deal,” Pence told Fox News. Pressed on whether his remark was intended as a threat, Pence replied, “Well, I think it’s more of a fact.”
As in its condemnation of Bolton, in 2003, North Korea reacted to Pence’s remarks with a threat to withdraw from the summit, and even warned of a nuclear confrontation with the United States. Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui charged that U.S. officials are engaging in “unlawful and outrageous acts” against North Korea. In a statement, she specifically condemned Pence for the “unbridled and impudent remarks” that North Korea might end like Libya. “As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice president,” she said. “In case the U.S. offends against our good will and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the D.P.R.K.-U.S. summit.”
Without a summit, Choe warned, the consequences could be dire. “Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States,” she said. Trump’s letter to Kim cancelling the summit was released just hours after Choe’s comments.
The diplomacy may also have been complicated by Kim’s surprise second trip to China this month. Trump praised President Xi Jinping for helping to pressure North Korea but also suggested that Kim’s attitude had shifted—and possibly drifted—after the North Korea–China summit on May 8th. Trump called Xi both a friend and “a world-class poker player,” hinting that China is gaming its leverage and role in the new diplomacy. “Things changed after that meeting,” Trump told reporters. “So I can’t say that I’m happy about it, O.K.?” On May 16th, North Korea also abruptly cancelled scheduled talks with South Korea, which has helped broker the diplomacy.
By Wednesday, the White House insisted it was proceeding with travel plans, but there was a notable iffiness to the President’s tone about the results. “Whether the deal gets made or not, who knows?” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Moon Jae-in, the South Korean President, on Tuesday. “I don’t want to waste a lot of time, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to waste a lot of time.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has led the diplomacy during two quick trips to North Korea, also injected caution. “A bad deal is not an option,” he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Wednesday. “The American people are counting on us to get this right. If the right deal is not on the table, we will respectfully walk away.”
Normally, this close to a meeting of heads of state, the so-called sherpas—senior diplomats who orchestrate the advance legwork of summitry, including the text of a pact—would have been agreeing on the final wording. But basic logistics and timing were still in question. So was the agenda. There was little sign of the intense diplomacy required to produce a text. A former U.S. official who has negotiated with North Korea called the contact so far “very tenuous.”
U.S. officials were still “working to make sure there’s a common understanding” of the basics to be discussed in Singapore, Pompeo told reporters on Tuesday. “It could be that it comes right down to the end and doesn’t happen,” he said. Pompeo spent only thirteen hours on the ground in Pyongyang on May 9th, a trip made partly to broker the release of three imprisoned Americans. The United States does not have a full-time diplomatic presence in Pyongyang to engage directly. And, earlier this month, a North Korean delegation reportedly failed to show up in Singapore for a pre-planning meeting with its American counterpart. “It’s clear that the two sides are very far part,” Joseph Yun, a career diplomat who was the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy until March and is now a senior adviser at the Asia Group, said.
The White House decision must have been sudden. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he still believed that Kim is “serious” about denuclearization. He used his forty-minute impromptu comments with reporters to try to reassure the thirty-four-year-old North Korean leader that his regime would survive if he came to Singapore and agreed to give up his nuclear arsenal, missiles, and other major arms.
“I will guarantee his safety, yes,” Trump said. “He will be safe. He will be happy. His country will be rich. His country will be hard-working and prosperous.” The President said that his new relationship with North Korea—hatched on March 8th, when Trump agreed to meet with Kim—“seems to be working.” The North Korean leader will be “extremely happy if something works out,” Trump said.
Yet the President’s early confidence has butted up against the long-standing realities of North Korea. There is, as yet, no real “relationship” at all.
This post was updated after the announcement that the summit was cancelled.
Robin Wright has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”Read more »
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