The stakes are high for Pompeo’s visit which will continue the work started in Singapore three weeks ago when President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un met and agreed to start a diplomatic process to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
Faced with questions about North Korea continuing to make progress on its nuclear program ahead of Pompeo’s July 5 visit, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert emphasized the U.S. government is carefully watching North Korea as they pursue a diplomatic path.
“We go into this eyes wide open,” Nauert told reports on Tuesday. She continued that North Korea is “very clear” about U.S. expectations, namely fulfilling the North Korean leader’s commitment to work toward complete denuclearization. “There will be no surprises in terms of what we are asking them to do,” Nauert said.
The situation today has improved from one year ago when North Korea conducted a July 4th intercontinental ballistic missile test. However, recent reports have raised questions about Kim’s commitment to give up his nuclear weapons and whether the United States and North Korea may return to the edge of conflict.
This week, U.S. intelligence sources leaked information to reporters indicating North Korea was increasing its production of nuclear fuel at more than one secret site.
NBC News first reported the development. The story quoted a U.S. official who said, “There’s no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production” of fissile materials. “There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S.”
Other outlets confirmed the reports of “more than just one hidden site” and that North Korea sought to obfuscate the scope of its nuclear program even while it was agreeing to denuclearization talks with the United States.
The U.S. government has been aware of at least one nuclear weapons site in Yongbyon, leading to estimates that the country had enough fissile material for dozens of nuclear warheads (65 according to recent estimates). For decades, the U.S. government suspected additional sites. This week, The Washington Post, NBC and others reported the existence of at least two additional sites, one of which has potentially twice the uranium enrichment capacity as Yongbyon, indicating North Korea’s weapons arsenal could be larger than previously estimated.
Late last month, 38 North, an organization dedicated to monitoring North Korean developments, released privately acquired satellite data showing significant upgrades at and around the Yongbyon research facility.
In addition to enrichment, North Korea was also upgrading and expanding a known missile manufacturing site in the city of Hamhung, according to satellite images released this week by the nonproliferation center at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies. According to their analysis, much of the new construction took place in May and June before the Trump-Kim summit.
“The expansion suggests that, despite hopes for denuclearization, Kim Jong Un is committed to increasing North Korea’s stockpile of nuclear-armed missiles,” the report’s authors David Schmerler and Jeffrey Lewis concluded.
ARE THE REPORTS EVIDENCE OF BAD FAITH NEGOTIATIONS?
“If you put together all these different reports … I think it’s pretty clear that Kim Jong Un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons,” said Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest.
Rather than following through on the Singapore agreement to work toward denuclearization, Kazianis believes North Korea will take advantage of the diplomatic opening to engage on issues, like normalizing relations or a Korean peace treaty, that will take years to negotiate.
“While that time is moving forward, the North Koreans are going to continue to build more nuclear weapons and long-range missiles as a sort of guarantee that if the negotiations don’t work, they have a bigger badder nuclear deterrent,” he said.
Though the history of U.S.-North Korean nuclear talks favors the skeptics, Jenny Town, a senior researcher with the Stimson Center and managing editor of 38 North, emphasized that the upgrades to the nuclear and missile sites are not surprising and took place outside of a formal deal.
Kim Jong Un is not reneging on any agreement, she noted, because there was no agreement in place. The Singapore document signed by both Trump and Kim outlined a broad agenda for peace and stability, it was not a technical document.
“It is not surprising that work that started before the summit continues,” she said, both at the covert facilities and the missile development sites. “I would expect to see at least maintenance at these sites continue until there is actually an agreement in place.”
Critics of President Trump have pointed to the reports of North Korea’s continued expansion of its nuclear program as evidence that President Trump is getting played by Kim, who he has praised in the weeks leading up to the Singapore Summit and the weeks since. After returning from Singapore last month, President Trump made the confusing and inaccurate claim that there was “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts argued the recent reports on North Korea’s covert nuclear sites prove why Trump’s “‘trust before verify’ approach to #NorthKorea is naive and misguided.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted, “Photo ops just don’t bring peace.”
On Tuesday, Trump reacted to critics, tweeting that the conversations with North Korea are going well. “Only the Opposition Party, which includes the Fake News, is complaining. If not for me, we would not be at War with North Korea!”
WILL NORTH KOREA AGREE TO FULL DISCLOSURE?
Most disarmament experts believe the first step in any talks will be to get a complete account of North Korea’s program, including all declared and covert facilities, the number of warheads in its arsenal, its enrichment capabilities and disclosures about other elements of its missile, chemical and biological weapons programs.
Some have suggested the purpose of Secretary Pompeo’s trip to North Korea will be focused on securing an agreement from Kim Jong Un to fully disclose the elements of his nuclear program. Getting that agreement and ensuring access and inspections will be among the fundamental challenges U.S. negotiators are expected to face if the talks with North Korea continue.
National Security Adviser John Bolton told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expected Secretary Pompeo will be discussing a U.S. plan to “dismantle all of their WMD and ballistic missile programs in a year” during his meetings this week. Such a plan would be predicated on full disclosure and access to North Korean nuclear sites.
According to Kazianis, Kim can prove he is serious about denuclearization this week in his meetings with Pompeo by agreeing to provide the United States with an account of the country’s nuclear program. “If they aren’t willing to do that,” he said, “I think the United States needs to drop the hammer and move to a sort of ‘maximum pressure 2.0’ campaign” that sharply ratchets up the economic restrictions on the regime.
Getting back to the level of economic sanctions that existed in December at the height of the “maximum pressure” campaign, would be a challenge, experts explained, particularly in light of the brewing trade war between the United States and China, North Korea’s economic lifeline.
Despite the Trump administration repeatedly asserting it would not let up economic pressure on the Kim regime until it had demonstrated “verifiable, irreversible” steps to denuclearize, it is widely acknowledged that the “maximum pressure” campaign’s stringent economic sanctions are no longer in effect.
In an “obituary” for the maximum pressure policy, former U.S. ambassador and nonproliferation expert Joseph DeThomas observed that “the policy lost all ability to affect the outside world sometime between the moment that Kim Jong Un trod on the red carpet in Beijing and the second he crossed the line into the ROK [Republic of Korea] sector in Panmunjom.”
DeThomas anticipated the policy would “crumble into dust” shortly after the Trump-Kim summit.
President Trump tacitly acknowledged this fact shortly after returning from Singapore, noting Chinese President Xi Jinping had stopped enforcing international sanctions on North Korea in recent months as Beijing and Pyongyang reestablished diplomatic ties.
During a press conference, President Trump said of Chinese President Xi, “He really closed up that border [with North Korea]…but maybe not in the last couple of months. But that’s OK.”
The coming days will be critical to determining whether or not progress can be made in rolling back the North Korean nuclear threat or whether the United States and North Korea will return to the brink of conflict.
“If Pompeo comes back empty-handed, I think it’s going to be a busy summer for all of us,” Kazianis stated. “And not in a good way.”
