THE denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula will not be achieved until the president of the United States stops treating the effort as a one-man show. While Donald Trump deserves credit at least for getting the ball rolling in earnest with the Singapore summit, the resulting statement he issued with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was frustratingly short of details and seemed to beg for greater international involvement.

President Trump on last Friday renewed an executive order on sanctions against North Korea for another year, on the grounds that Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal continues to pose an “extraordinary threat”. This was the presidential decree first introduced by George W Bush in 2008 and kept in effect by Barack Obama, but its extension now comes as somewhat of a surprise.

It appears to reaffirm the US position that sanctions will remain in place until Kim destroys his arsenal and jettisons all such capabilities to the satisfaction of foreign inspectors. And yet Pyongyang and Washington are engaged in negotiations to do just that — beyond the added burden of sanctions. The confusing signal contradicts Trump’s own words after the June 12 summit with Kim, when he said the North’s nuclear weapons likely no longer posed a major threat.

Also on Friday, to underline Trump’s commitment to reduce provocative activities in the region, the US and South Korea agreed to suspend two military training exercises scheduled for this year. North Korea is thus getting the same carrot-and-stick treatment utilised by previous US administrations. The summit gave Pyongyang nothing essentially new, and now Trump is keeping the pressure on with sanctions.

The regime has coped with the trade and economic sanctions for a decade and Trump cannot guarantee they’re working or will work henceforth. North Korea will certainly face continuing fiscal difficulties, but it can always count on China to ease the pressure.

Trump has sought to tackle the issue bilaterally, although he claims to have the cooperation of South Korea, Japan and even China. This has not been established, and it must be remembered that all three of those purported partners, as well as other countries with a stake in the peninsula’s status and future, have their own interests to protect.

South Korea is of course hoping for reconciliation with the North, if not reunification of the peninsula. President Moon Jae-in appears to have forged an understanding with Kim through their meetings. Japan would like to see negotiations over denuclearisation pursue an agreement regarding its citizens abducted by agents of Pyongyang.

China continues to hold the master key in all this. It has long been North Korea’s chief economic sponsor and both are ostensibly communist countries. The Singapore summit might not have happened without China’s influence, given Kim’s meetings with Xi Jinping before and after.

Other countries’ diverging roles and interests demonstrate that the White House needs to proceed carefully and abandon any unilateral mindset. Trump must be in a position to accommodate the hopes and ambitions of others. The foremost goal is to rein in the North’s nuclear capabilities, and we now have signs, however vague, that Kim is willing to pursue that aim.

At this stage there is no clear path to the vaunted “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling” of his weapons of mass destruction, and meanwhile there are other important factors to consider.

The Nation/Thailand

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2018