This story is about as original as the last «Transformers» movie.
After South Korean officials announced on Thursday that Kim Jong Un was willing to meet with President Donald Trump and discuss denuclearization, many analysts are hopeful that permanent peace on the Korean peninsula may finally be on the horizon.
Not to stomp on your hopes and dreams, but that story is about as original as the last “Transformers” movie.
There’s a long history of supposed breakthroughs in relations between U. S. presidents and the Kim regime and — spoiler alert — none of them end with chummy handshakes between the two leaders.
Instead, North Korea has pretty much always been a bit of a tease, promising denuclearization, getting concessions from world leaders then turning around and going right back to muscle flexing and missile shooting.
Let’s go back to (recent) history class and take a look at how past presidents have dealt with North Korea.
Under the Clinton presidency, the U. S. undertook the first major attempt to normalize relations with North Korea, then under the leadership of Kim Jong Il.
Signed in October 1994, the Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea sought to dismantle the nuclear weapons program of the DPRK in exchange for $4 billion worth of aid for nuclear energy.
The deal was pretty complicated, but the gist of it is that the U. S. believed that North Korea was building nuclear reactors to produce fuel for weapons. With the Agreed Framework, Clinton said that construction on the reactors had to stop, but the U. S. would help the regime build new nuclear power plants that would be used for energy only.
“This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective – an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula,” Clinton said in 1994 according to The New York Times .
“This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world,” Clinton announced. “It’s a crucial step toward drawing North Korea into the global community.”
Despite the ambitious deal, we all know what happened. North Korea didn’t, in fact, become a part of the “global community.” Instead, the DPRK sunk deeper into isolation and aggression, continuing to develop its nuclear program.
But the framework wasn’t useless. It set the template for future negotiations with the Kim regime and put on paper a general starting point on the concessions both countries might be willing to make. Someday.
So whatever could’ve gone wrong with such a carefully negotiated deal promising improved relations between the U. S. and North Korea and the dismantling of the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program, you ask?
Well…
In 2000, as George W. Bush was preparing to take office, the White House announced that Clinton wouldn’t be able to meet with North Korean leaders, despite a lack of progress on implementation of the Agreed Framework.
As the Bush administration settled into power, foreign policy officials initially expressed their intent to complete the implementation of Clinton’s negotiations with North Korea.
But, long story short, problems came up in negotiations with verification as the countries didn’t agree on how to ensure that the Kim regime was playing by the rules of an agreement.
According to the Arms Control Association, North Korea in 2001 promised to “take thousand-fold revenge» on the United States «and its black-hearted intention to torpedo the dialogue between north and south [Korea].”
It didn’t help the situation when Bush named North Korea as part of his so-called “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address, and soon after, the DPRK admitted to a “clandestine nuclear-weapons” program and announced its intent to nullify the 1994 agreement.
Over the course of the Bush administration, relations between the two countries teetered between commitments to peace and disagreements over verification policies leading to renewed threats of aggression.
“Last night the government of North Korea proclaimed to the world that it had conducted a nuclear test,” Bush announced on October 9,2006. “The United States condemns this provocative act. Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond.”
That news came just a few days after North Korea said in a statement that it would “do its utmost to realize the denuclearization of the [Korean] peninsula.”
See a pattern yet?
By the end of Bush’s term in office, a campaign of increased sanctions from the U. S. and bombastic threats from North Korea had become commonplace.
This should seem familiar if you’re over the age of 10.
To put it simply, Obama took what his predecessors did about North Korea, and built a foreign policy dependent on avoiding the mistakes and keeping up the status quo of relations with the Kim regime.
Speaking of the Kim regime, it was under Obama’s first term when Kim Jong Il died, replaced by his son, Kim Jong Un. There were some who hoped the new leader might be more open to change, but that didn’t last long.
When it became clear that the new Kim was only more committed to his country’s nuclear program, the Obama administration adopted a policy of “ strategic patience .”
Obama wouldn’t focus on regime change or deals that called for anything less than irreversible dismantlement of the DPRK’s nuclear program. Instead, under his watch, the U. S. upped the ante on sanctions and worked on improving relations with South Korea as a key ally in the region.
Unfortunately, less-than-ideal relations with China, which would often undercut North Korean sanctions, got in the way of the U. S.’ pressure campaign. But overall the Obama administration focused less on talks and negotiations, and more on containment of the aggressive nation.
Of course, President Trump’s approach hasn’t been quite so subtle.
Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1,2017
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.
