The dispute over the shape, scope and speed of a potential disarmament stymies international efforts.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un say they have the same goal \u2013 denuclearization of the Korean peninsula \u2013 at their upcoming summit in Singapore.
But they disagree fundamentally about what that would look like.
The dispute over the shape, scope and speed of a potential disarmament has stymied international efforts to stop or roll back North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program for three decades. It arguably poses the biggest obstacle to a successful summit now that it is back on track for June 12.
Reconciling or finessing that gap \u2013 and determining what the secretive police state would get in return for handing over or dismantling its nuclear arsenal \u2013 could make the difference between a deal or no deal after the haggling starts.
\u201cThe common mistake is to assume when the North Koreans talk about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, they\u2019re talking about giving up all their weapons,\u201d said Victor Cha, who headed Asian affairs in the National Security Council under President George W. Bush and who participated took in nuclear talks with North Korea at the time.
\u201cIt\u2019s not really the way we look at it, which is \u2018Crate it up and take it out,’\u201d said Cha, who now heads the Korea program at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Rather, he said, North Koreans view denuclearization as a long-term aspiration, the way Americans talk of someday abolishing nuclear weapons worldwide. North Korea has a long list of other grievances, and could demand the removal of U. S. troops, or even the U. S. nuclear umbrella, from South Korea.
\u201cIt\u2019s an endless list,\u201d said Michael Green, another veteran of Bush administration negotiations with North Korea. \u201cThey will keep adding to the list of things we have to do in order for them to denuclearize until the cows come home.\u201d
Most experts say Pyongyang wants to be recognized as a full-fledged nuclear power with the weapons it has, but with global obligations, much as Communist China\u2019s nuclear arms program ultimately was accepted after President Nixon\u2019s visit to Beijing in 1972.
The broad parameters of a potential deal are well-established. The U. S. side wants North Korea to give up the estimated 20 to 60 nuclear weapons that it has built, and the infrastructure that created them, and presumably the ballistic missiles that can hurl them across the Pacific.
In exchange, Trump can offer U. S. security guarantees for the regime in Pyongyang, better relations with Washington and its allies in Japan and South Korea and easing of international economic sanctions that have strangled North Korea\u2019s ability to trade with the outside world. Trump has signaled that he won\u2019t offer financial aid, though he has suggested he would ask Asian allies to do so.
Whether that\u2019s enough \u2013 or whether North Korea is really prepared to give up a weapons program that has consumed much of the impoverished country\u2019s energy and resources for decades \u2013 remains to be seen.
The two sides have yet to define denuclearization, a strategic ambiguity that could provide negotiating room or doom the diplomacy altogether.
The goal for the Trump administration is what it calls \u201ccomplete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,\u201d jargon now so common it\u2019s referred to as CVID.
In theory, that would require detailed inspections and long-term monitoring of hundreds of North Korean military sites and buildings, most now secret, in a verification program far more intrusive than the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump recently abandoned.
Trump\u2019s national security adviser, John Bolton, enraged North Koreans and nearly scuttled the sensitive diplomacy when he suggested that North Korea should follow the \u201cLibya model.\u201d Libya gave up its nascent nuclear program in 2003 in hopes, largely unfulfilled, of economic benefits. Its leader, Moammar Gadhafi, was killed in an uprising eight years later.
Most nuclear experts discount the idea of an immediate and complete denuclearization in North Korea, given its big program and deep distrust of Washington. They say full disarmament probably would require at least a decade and allow the two governments to build trust over time as they see results.
\u201cThe summit represents a historic opportunity,\u201d said Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and one of the few Americans who has toured North Korea\u2019s major nuclear facilities. But he said Washington \u201cwill have to settle for a phased process,\u201d not a quick disarmament.
Hecker and two co-authors, Robert Carlin and Elliot Serbin, recently completed a study at Stanford University arguing that full disarmament would take 15 years.
After nuclear weapons and missile tests stop, they argue, initial stages would include ending production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, either of which can power a bomb, and stopping exports of nuclear technology or expertise to other states.
Kim wants multilateral security guarantees, in particular a declaration from the United States that it won\u2019t seek to overthrow the Kim government, said William Overhalt, a senior research fellow at Harvard University. The isolated nation also likely wants cultural and economic exchanges \u2013 and eventually some form of diplomatic recognition, he said.
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