Secretary of State Rex Tillerson chaired a meeting in Vancouver Tuesday of foreign ministers to strategize allied diplomacy with North Korea. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was in Vancouver too, but mostly “to support our diplomats to ensure they negotiate from a position of strength,” according to Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.
Maybe it should’ve been the other way around.
As Tillerson told the participants, Washington organized the meeting to assure the allies are all on the same page. “If all countries cut off or significantly limit their economic and diplomatic engagements with North Korea, the sum total of our individual, national efforts will increase the chances of a negotiated resolution” he said.
Wait, negotiated solution?
Almost sounds like Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, currently the friendliest face Washington offers to the world’s rogue regimes. Following the terrifying false alarm in her state over the weekend, Gabbard told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump must “sit across the table from Kim Jong-un without preconditions, work out the differences, figure out a way to build this pathway towards denuclearization.”
Well, not quite. America does have preconditions. Tillerson highlighted the danger Pyongyang’s constant ballistic-missile testing poses to international aviation. And unlike those in Hawaii, the sirens that went off twice last year in Japan were no false alarm, triggered by actual overhead North Korean missiles.
So America says that before talking, Kim must cut that out.
Tillerson also rejected a Russian-Chinese “freeze for freeze” plan: Pyongyang ends testing, while we cease our joint naval and military exercises in the region.
But even President Trump now seems eager to put his deal-making artistry to the Kim test. “I’d probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un,” he told The Wall Street Journal last week.
But even if Kim agreed to our preconditions (big if), what’s to negotiate?
This week, Pyongyang sent diplomats to South Korea to talk about next month’s Winter Olympics. Wanna negotiate other issues? For that, Kim’s envoys demanded the return of 21 women who defected to the South in 2016 while working in China. Doing so, of course, would doom the women to a certain horrific death, so no dice.
That’s what negotiations with Kim would look like.
They don’t call it the Hermit Kingdom for nothing. Pyongyang deliberately isolates North Korea from the outside world and separates the regime from the people. Kim maintains his father’s (and grandfather’s) anti-Americanism, and he craves war toys.
Why, then, would he even contemplate denuclearization?
President Bill Clinton tried, sending aid to North Korea while negotiating phantom disarmament deals. George W. Bush removed Pyongyang from the list of state sponsors of terror in order to facilitate negotiations that never materialized. And Barack Obama tried “strategic patience” — ignoring Kim in the hope he’d beg to negotiate.
Why would Trump follow any of these failed approaches?
After decades of faux diplomacy, Kim’s threat is so real that a false alarm forces terrified Hawaiians to hide in sewers for fear of radioactive fallout. Imagine if nuclear-tipped missiles were really on their way here.
Perhaps the administration’s idea is to present a calm façade while the Winter Games are on, only to later publicly float striking the North.
True, like all current options, the military one is extremely unattractive. Yet, when in doubt America must lean toward an aggressive stance, rather than a conciliatory one.
Our goal, after all, is “the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea,” as Tillerson said Tuesday. He later added he’s seeking a “permanent and peaceful solution.”
Regrettably, ending the menace for good without firing a shot may not be possible. If it is, it can be achieved only if a credible military option is front and center.
We might be better off, therefore, sending Mattis to a future international gathering as the main player, with Tillerson as second fiddle.
And strictly for strategic reasons, why not turn an old cliché on its head: Take the diplomatic option off the table, and stop forever pretending the military one is off limits.