The US and North Korea: Lessons From Hanoi

Coming on the heels of the Singapore summit, the second meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam was too much, too soon. The outcome was predictable. Even the preparatory, working-level meetings leading up to the summit in Vietnam proved largely nonproductive – a harbinger of things to come.

While the Hanoi summit gave neither party the outcome it had hoped for, it provided important insights into the priorities and blind spots of each country. These insights will likely prove useful, even if Hanoi marks the end of the road for bilateral negotiations.

What Happened in Singapore and Hanoi

The June 2018 Singapore summit was, unquestionably, historic. It marked the first time a sitting U.S. president ever met a North Korean leader face-to-face. But for all of its historic significance, it proved to be a let-down, albeit a let-down with some illusion of success. Prior to the meeting, negotiations resulted in the return of the four Americans previously held captive by Pyongyang’s leadership – a noteworthy, though not unprecedented, concession.

While nothing of substance emerged from the summit itself, it did result in a joint statement in which Trump and Kim agreed to improve relations, build a peace regime, commit to complete denuclearization, and restart efforts to return the remains of American POWs from the Korean War.

Yet, within a few hours of the signing of the Singapore declaration, things began to unravel. In the press conference following the summit, Trump blindsided allies, the Pentagon, and U.S. forces in Korea by temporarily suspending joint military exercises with South Korea. Trump described the defensive preparedness exercises as provocative and costly. Since the Singapore summit, the United States and South Korea have subsequently cancelled at least nine joint military exercises and placed constraints on several others.

Trump also waved off concerns regarding human rights – in spite of the fact that Kim’s regime holds an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners. Instead, he flattered the North Korean leader, calling him honorable and crediting him with loving his people and wanting what is best for them. This was shocking, considering the president’s strong condemnations of Pyongyang’s human rights violations in 2017 and earlier in 2018.

The mirage of success in Singapore faded quickly as it became clear that neither the United States nor North Korea agreed on what “complete denuclearization” means. North Korea claims it means denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula, including U.S. nuclear assets that protect South Korea under their alliance arrangement. Meanwhile, the United States insists it means unilateral, North Korean disarmament, as required by 11 UN resolutions. Definitional issues continue to haunt negotiations.

The definitional issues, among others, hamstrung U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and, later, newly appointed Special Representative for North Korea Policy Steve Biegun. It also stalled progress in inter-Korean relations, resulting in the postponement of a planned visit by Kim Jong Un to Seoul at the invitation of South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Against this unpromising backdrop – one of immense uncertainty and limited progress – plans were hurriedly put in place for Trump and Kim to meet in Hanoi at the end of February.

The Hanoi summit was where the rubber was supposed to meet the road. It didn’t.

In the lead-up to the summit there was speculation, and later confirmation, that the United States was pursuing a four-part deal with North Korea, which included the promise of establishing joint liaison offices, the continuing return of American POWs remains, closure of the Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for offers of either full sanctions relief or inter-Korean economic engagement, and – the icing on the cake – the signing of a peace declaration.

Prospects of peace hung heavy in the Hanoi air. The Vietnamese deeply wanted to be the hosts who ushered in a new era of peace between the United States and North Korea. The signs dotting the cityscape read “Hanoi – the city for peace.” Expectations ran high.

But peace, which is unlikely in any regard to be delivered in the form of the aforementioned deal, proved elusive.

From the start of the summit on the evening of February 27, it was clear that things were not going as planned. Around 6:30 p.m., the two leaders sat for a photo opportunity that was open to the press. Trump repeated that time is on the United States’ side and a deal didn’t necessarily need to be inked “today.” The North Korean leader surprised everyone by saying that he was “not pessimistic” about the summit’s pending outcome.

The next day, negotiations lasted barely 45 minutes before the two leaders emerged. Trump and Kim forewent lunch, and Trump promptly called off the joint signing ceremony where the prospective Hanoi summit deal was to be properly inked. Instead, Trump headed to the JW Marriott in Hanoi to brief journalists who were curious about the summit’s outcome and why negotiations concluded so early. All sensed that it couldn’t be good.

Sure enough, the two sides were unable to come to an agreement on a whole host of issues. The reasons may prove invaluable to U.S. negotiators as they consider next steps.

Nonetheless, both sides returned home to their constituents with unfulfilled promises and little encouragement to suggest that intransigent, ever-present problems would be resolved soon.

In fact, since the summit, satellite imagery and South Korean intelligence both suggest that North Korea is reversing its dismantlement of the Sohae rocket launch facility. A key component of North Korea’s space program, the facility is used to perfect missile launch capabilities (although no missiles have been launched from the site). Many speculated that this was retaliation for Hanoi, but those same images and intelligence suggest that North Korea was reconstructing Sohae prior to Hanoi, arguably calling into question North Korea’s sincerity in coming to the negotiating table at all.

Lessons Learned From Hanoi?

While the summit’s outcome disappointed all parties, it was revealing in ways that should inform Washington’s future policy toward Pyongyang.

First, the summit conclusively confirmed that sanctions are having an impact on North Korea. That’s not to say that North Korea will denuclearize as a direct consequence of sanctions pressure. But clearly sanctions pressure is at least partially responsible for bringing North Korea to the negotiating table and North Korea desires sanctions relief.

Kim’s primary ask during negotiations in Hanoi was sanctions removal – specifically, for the complete removal of all sanctions instituted by the United Nations Security Council since 2016. These are among the toughest sanctions placed on North Korea. In return for their removal, North Korea offered only partial dismantlement of its nuclear program (an amorphous promise to dismantle parts of Yongbyon).

The offer was untenable and Kim’s nuclear negotiators knew it. They had been informed in previous closed-door negotiations that such an ask would be unacceptable. Moreover, it would be illegal. UN sanctions require complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear program. U.S. law reinforces this goal. None of the steps North Korea took prior to the summit (reversible dismantlement of Sohae, for example, or its promise to dismantle Yongbyon) come anywhere close to the UN-required standard of CVID.

The second lesson is that a top-down approach to negotiations may not work. Trump’s unconventional approach to negotiations with North Korea, which emphasized his personal relationship and negotiating skills vis-à-vis Kim Jong Un, have thus far been no more effective than closed-door negotiations between lower level officials in the past. In fact, they have resulted in American concessions that likely would not have been offered otherwise.

Such concessions include the undue legitimacy granted to the Kim regime by high-level photo-ops like the summits in Singapore and Hanoi. These confabs helped humanize and sanitize the image of a brutal dictator who developed a rogue weapons program and abuses his people.

These face-to-face summit meetings also resulted in the regrettable ending of all large-scale joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea. Curtailing these exercises undercuts allied readiness and the long-term stability and, eventually, maybe even the U.S. presence in the region.

Third, the current diplomatic rapprochement is out of touch with priorities communicated in current U.S. policy toward North Korea. Prior to and during the latest summit meeting, North Korea stated its desire for complete sanctions relief. Yet U.S. policy states that North Korea must make progress on more than just denuclearization before it can enjoy full sanctions relief.

To be more specific, current U.S. sanctions law is multifaceted, with targeted financial measures in place for the purpose of curtailing North Korea’s continued nuclear, missile, and chemical and biological weapons development. North Korea is also designated as a primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act. Furthermore, North Korea is designated a state sponsor of terrorism. And finally, Kim Jong Un, other North Korean government officials, and North Korean entities are currently designated for committing severe human rights violations.

The congressionally-mandated North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act ties U.S. concerns regarding North Korea’s weapons programs to concerns related to North Korea’s continued human rights violations. The act conditions sanctions relief on the closure of North Korea’s political prison camps, the restoration of reunions between separated families in the Koreas, and the resolution of abductee issues, among other concerns.

This is no mere laundry list of concerns related to North Korea. The various sanctioned activities should be viewed as components of a comprehensive effort to alter Pyongyang’s behavior.

The purpose of instituting sanctions is to shift the risk calculus of the bad actor. Since the United States institutes sanctions against North Korea on both security and human rights grounds, it communicates a belief that pressure has the potential to change behavior regardless of the issue.

Sanctions and diplomacy are two sides of the same coin. If properly coordinated, they should render the desired results expressed in both policy approaches. Therefore, it’s time for U.S. diplomatic overtures toward North Korea to encompass more than just denuclearization.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In the aftermath of the failed Hanoi summit, top U.S. government officials, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, are signaling a renewed dedication to a strategy of exerting maximum pressure on Kim’s regime. This is the right move given North Korea’s failure to move one iota closer to denuclearization. (Though Trump, in his usual unorthodox style, undercut this signal in late March by tweeting that he was overturning a Treasury Department decision to apply new sanctions to North Korea.)

A return to maximum pressure shouldn’t just mean tightening the bolts on pre-existing pressure points. It should also mean a move toward designating targets the U.S. Treasury previously shied away from sanctioning. For example, the United States should target Chinese banks that Washington knows are responsible for laundering money for the regime in Pyongyang. Such systematic targeting was effective in the past, for example, when the United States sanctioned Macau-based Banco Delta Asia in 2005. At the time, North Korean authorities said that designating the bank as a primary money laundering concern put the squeeze on funding for their weapons programs.

Beyond this, the U.S. government should make more active use of the human rights authorities it possesses to hold the regime accountable for the rights abuses the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report deemed as “without parallel” in the modern world. That means making good on obligations under the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act to issue yearly designations of North Korean officials and entities on human rights grounds. It also means making more active use of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions authorities, which permit the United States to discontinue imports from entities employing North Korean forced laborers.

Rather than viewing sanctions as a separate track from diplomacy, sanctions should be seen as a means to an end – not only to altering North Korea’s behavior but also in bringing Pyongyang to the negotiating table. Once they are at the negotiating table, the policy priorities expressed through current sanctions policy – security, human rights, economic, and otherwise – should be integrated in a strategic manner than encourages forward movement. A holistic, comprehensive strategy is merited and necessary, and making progress on other areas, especially human rights, will advance other U.S. national interests and national security priorities.